


Two Months

by SanguineInk



Series: The Adventures of Ten, Rose, and Jack [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - No Doomsday (Doctor Who), Episode Fix-It: s02e13 Doomsday, F/M, Gen, Torchwood References, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 12:00:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 30,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17662229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SanguineInk/pseuds/SanguineInk
Summary: The Doctor and Rose arrive at Jackie's flat before the ghosts start showing up in Army of Ghosts. Oh, what a difference two months can make. Not just a rewrite of Doomsday - more of a complete reworking. (Reposted from FF.net)





	1. A Visit and a Kidnapping

**Author's Note:**

> Hello. I wrote a lot of fanfiction on fanfiction.net back when I was in high school and college. I never really stopped reading fanfic (or all the lovely reviews from the stuff I wrote), but I haven't written anything in a while. I figured it might be fun to move some of my more popular stuff over to AO3 and hopefully encourage me to keep writing (and to write better lol).
> 
> This story was originally written in 2010.

“Here we are! Earth, England, London, the Powell Estate—”

“You better have gotten the right year this time,” said Rose, grinning.

“It’s not _my_ fault we landed in 1007 instead of 2007,” whined the Doctor as the TARDIS came to a halt.  “Besides, we made new friends!”

“Really? Was that before or after the Vikings kidnapped me and tried to sell you as a slave?”

“Before. Remember the nice chap who pointed us in the direction of the village?”

Rose thought for a moment. “The one with the spear taller than the TARDIS?”

“That’s the one!” the Doctor said brightly. “Ingvar the Conqueror. Nice bloke.”

“Wasn’t he the one who clonked you on the head while his mate tossed me over his shoulder and carried me off?”

“Really? My memory of that’s a bit fuzzy… Anyway, here we are, 2007!” He flung open the TARDIS doors and stepped into the graffitied alley. Lugging her bag full of laundry, Rose followed him, gazing around for familiar sights.

“Well, the cars don’t look too different. 2007 it is, then,” announced Rose.

“Of course it is. Your lack of confidence is quite insulting,” he said cheekily, taking her free hand. Laughing as they strolled the two blocks down to Jackie's flat, the Doctor and Rose passed two black SUVs parked across the street.

* * *

Jackie eyes lit up with delight when she found them on her doorstep. “Rose!” She threw her arms around her daughter joyfully. The Doctor tried to sneak around them, but Jackie suddenly released Rose and turned to him. “Oh, come here, you!” Much to his horror, the Doctor felt Jackie seize him and mash her lips onto his. Repeatedly. Finally, she let him go and eagerly rushed to see what Rose had brought her.

Grimacing, the Doctor wiped his lips off with his sleeve and strode to the living room. Rose was telling her mum about her gift, a device that could predict the weather. The Doctor braced himself for the mind-numbing hours ahead, reminding himself that Rose was happy and surely that was worth a few miserable hours? Outside the window, everything looked gloomy, from the sky that was threatening to rain to the black SUVs across the road. Why Rose would want to be here, when she could be with him on the planet Noone, watching the Fallabo Nebula be born in a brilliant blaze of purple supernovas, was completely beyond him.

“Sorry I don’t have the tea ready!” Jackie called from the kitchen, busily putting the kettle on, “I didn’t hear that box of yours coming in.”

“Yeah, I parked the TARDIS a bit further away than usual,” said the Doctor, tugging on his earlobe absent-mindedly as he moved towards the kitchen.

“Course you did, so you could make my Rose carry that whole bag by herself even further! What sort of bloke doesn’t offer to carry a girl’s bags? Are your alien arms too flimsy or something?” She nattered on and on, and the Doctor found it easier to just sip the tea Jackie handed him rather than bother pointing out that _Rose_ was the one who didn’t want him carrying her dirty knickers, and his arms were perfectly capable of carrying very heavy loads, thank you very much. Just because this body was thinner _…._

After finishing his (admittedly delicious) tea, he managed to extract himself from the kitchen while Rose gushed about her adventures to her mother—edited of course. There was no use telling her mum about almost marrying fifty-year-old Viking kings, after all. The Doctor flipped through the telly channels for or a couple of hours before Rose wandered into the telly room.

“What are you watching?” asked Rose, walking in during the final scene of a movie.

“ _War of the Worlds_ ,” answered the Doctor. “The book was better, although Herbert overdramatized the Mursian invasion in the first place. For starters, they were Mursians, not Martians—”

“Who’s Herbert, then?”

“You know, Herbert Wells?” Rose said nothing. “H.G.Wells?” Still nothing. “Wrote _The Time Machine_? I’m the one that inspired that, you know.” Rose’s expression remained blank. “Well, I’ll have to take you to meet him then. Clever bloke, he was. Bit pompous.”

“Is he talking about himself again?” asked Jackie, following Rose from the kitchen.

“ _Mum_ ,” lectured Rose. “Although,” she grinned at him, “She’s right. You are.”

Springing up from the sofa, the Doctor beamed. “Ha, Jackie called me clever! First compliment I’ve ever gotten from your mother, Rose...Hold on.”

He moved closer to the window and frowned. “Those black SUVs haven’t moved since we got here. Jackie, how long have they been there?”

“What, those?,” said Jackie dismissively, “Been there for a few days now. Me and Bev next door reckon it’s the police fixing to bust the people across the street for drugs. She thinks she saw the man there with some needles.”

Rose followed the Doctor to the window. Sure enough, at either end of the street sat two black unmarked SUVs. Tinted windows prevented from seeing if anyone was inside. “Doctor, what’s wrong?”

“Well, they’ve been there for hours, plus they’re right next to where I usually park the TARDIS,” he said, still frowning. “I actually told the TARDIS to park there,” he pointed next to where one SUV was parked, “But she decided to park the next street over instead. I thought she was being temperamental, but…” He turned abruptly to Jackie. “Jackie, have you been followed lately? Seen any suspicious people lurking about or maybe on your way to the shop?”

“Well, don’t be daft! Why would anyone be looking for _me_? I haven’t done anything!”

“Well, I don’t think they’re looking for _you_!” the Doctor snapped back.

Jackie looked ready to slap him, so Rose stepped between them. “So, what, you mean they’re tracking the TARDIS?”

“Everywhere the TARDIS lands it leaves a faint time signature, bit like exhaust fumes from a car but longer-lasting, which can be detected if you have the right equipment….but that’s _wrong_ , you lot don’t have that type of technology for another couple millennia….” He ran his hands through his hair and looked back towards the SUVs parked on the street, puzzlement crossing his features for a brief second before straightening and making his way to the door.

“I should move the TARDIS….park it in here, maybe.” He waved a hand at the center of the sitting room.

Jackie looked horrified. “You can’t park that thing in here!”

“It’s alright, Mum, visiting time’s about over anyway.” Rose gave her mum a quick peck on the cheek and turned to the Doctor. “To the TARDIS then?”

He brightened. “To the TARDIS! Allon-sy! Hmm, I rather like that. Allon-sy, allon-sy….”

Despite his cheerful goodbye to Jackie, his grip on Rose’s hand was tighter than usual as they carefully and quickly passed the SUVs. Adjusting her laundry bag, Rose squinted to see if anyone occupied them, but the SUVs just sat patiently, like a panther crouched and waiting to strike. The Doctor, for once, was being absolutely quiet, and that more than anything else told Rose exactly how worried he was.

They turned into the alley where the TARDIS sat waiting for them. The Doctor’s pace quickened and Rose was almost jogging to keep up with him.

They were ten metres from the TARDIS when the men materialised, appearing from around the corner to cut them off from the TARDIS, in windows overlooking the street, and emerging from behind garbage bins lining the alley. Both black SUVs careened around the corner behind them, and more men spilled out of each of them.

Finding themselves suddenly surrounded by men with guns, the Doctor and Rose put their hands up in surrender.

A man with an unfortunately large nose stepped forward. “Surrender your weapons!” he ordered.

“Don’t have any!” the Doctor said cheerfully. “Don’t suppose we can go now?”

“Sonic screwdriver!” commanded Big Nose.

“What, this?” the Doctor carefully extracted a long silver cylinder from his pocket. Rose glanced at it, hands still in the air. She had no idea what the Doctor was holding, but it wasn’t the sonic screwdriver.

“Drop it!” Big Nose commanded. The Doctor obliged, letting the silver cylinder slip from his fingers to clatter to the pavement below.

“Cover your head and run to the TARDIS,” he whispered to her, barely audible, “In 3…2…1—”

He took her hand and bolted towards the TARDIS just as the silver cylinder let loose a piercing shriek, shattering the glass in the windows and streetlights. Flinching at the noise and the sudden shower of shards of glass raining down on them, the gunmen were too stunned to react as the Doctor and Rose dashed through them, leaving the laundry bag behind.

Big Nose was the first to recover. Two seconds after the initial explosion, he barked, “Alpha Team, fire!”

The Doctor stumbled as something penetrated the arm holding Rose’s hand. Without stopping, he yanked it out with his other hand. Tranquiliser dart?

Rose cried out as twin darts struck her in the shoulder. Staggering, she remained upright for only another second before relinquishing the Doctor’s hand and toppling onto the pavement.

Two more darts landed in the Doctor’s back as he scooped Rose up into his arms and kept running. The TARDIS was so close…But yet another dart stabbed into his neck, and another dug into the back of his leg, and he could feel the tranquiliser pumping through his blood, making him sluggish.

He overbalanced as one more dart struck him in the shoulder. Rose tumbled from his arms as he fell to his knees and collapsed. The Doctor lay sprawled over her on the pavement, his head two feet from the TARDIS doors and five darts sticking from his body.

His body was paralysed and his head was swimming, but the Doctor remained fully consciousness, though unable to so much as twitch a finger. He heard boots stomping towards him and Rose. Forced to play opossum, he felt hands lifting and carrying him in the direction of the SUVs. He heard a faint grunt nearby that indicated someone was lifting something else—Rose? Was she conscious but paralysed, like him? It had taken a lot of the stuff to affect him; what would it do to her?

The Doctor felt himself being tossed into the back of one of the SUVs. Something soft slammed into him shortly after, and the door shut. Instantly his eyes flashed open to see that he had been right—Rose’s unconscious form was on top of him, hair draped over half her face. He tried to whisper her name, but his lips refused to budge.

Alright, so they couldn’t escape for now…..Who were these people? They’d known who he was, where and when he would be, and that he had a sonic screwdriver. How much else did they know? Had he met them before? Had _they_ met a future him before?

He heard the engine start and felt the car begin to move. He couldn’t know for sure how many people were in the car—possibly five, based on the sound of breathing—but they were silent. He’d get no information from them.

At least he could open his eyes, and he was fairly certain Rose was alright. He took comfort in the fact that their captors apparently wanted them alive. But for how much longer?


	2. Torchwood

Exactly twenty-two minutes, after their capture, the Doctor had regained enough movement to silently reach over and brush Rose’s hair off her face. Her eyes flashed open, full of panic. He put a finger to his lips to indicate silence, but he didn't need to—she didn’t so much as twitch.

_Blink if you understand me,_ he mouthed to her. She blinked.

_Once, yes; twice, no. Can you move?_ Two blinks.

_Are you hurt?_ Two blinks.

_Tranquiliser darts,_ he explained, _Both of us. You’re okay._

She blinked once to indicate she understood.

Without making a sound, the Doctor extracted the sonic screwdriver from his pocket, pointed at it, then at her. _Sorry, so sorry. Can’t let them find it. Blink twice if it’s not okay._

She blinked once, then widened her eyes in surprise as the Doctor reached into her shirt and slid the sonic screwdriver into her bra.

_You’re okay?_ She blinked once.

The SUV came to an abrupt halt, indicating that they had arrived at their destination, and the silent men in the front seats quickly piled out of the car.

The Doctor held a finger to his lips. Rose closed her eyes, and he followed suit and lay still as the back door opened. He felt hands grab him and lift him onto a stretcher. Metal bands clamped down over his chest, wrists, and legs. He resisted the urge to open his eyes as they wheeled him away, instead straining his ears to hear if they were taking Rose too.

He heard screeching and slamming, and smelled cool artificial air. They'd taken him inside a building, without Rose.

“He’s not awake yet?” said a female voice. Hands slid over him, pulling things from his pockets. Luckily most of his things were in the pockets of his overcoat, still draped over the console in the TARDIS. And of course, the sonic screwdriver was with Rose.

Something cold pressed down on his chest. “Can’t really tell, ma’am. I have no idea what his resting heart rate—or I suppose, heart rates—are. Based on the speed of just one heart, if he was human he would be conscious right now.”

“Doctor?” the female voice spoke to him again. The Doctor remained utterly motionless. “Try the defibrillator.”

“Oh, alright,” the Doctor sighed, opening his eyes. “Hello. As you apparently already know, I’m the Doctor. Not a very friendly bunch, are you? Mind explaining why I’m here?”

“My apologies, Doctor,” said the female voice, which belonged to a blonde woman. “Get those off him. It’s an honor to meet you, Doctor. Yvonne Hartman, head of Torchwood Institute.”

Freed, the Doctor sprung off the stretcher and noted the doors through which he had come were bolted very securely shut. Several guards, dressed in camouflage gear and holding large guns, surrounded him. “Torchwood? Torchwood, Torchwood, Torchwood….now why does that sound familiar? Isn’t that a 3960s band? No, sorry, that’s _Mulch_ wood…where did you come from again?”

“Scotland 1879, Queen Victoria was attacked by creatures beyond her imagination. She sought to protect our country from those creatures.”

“That was the name of the house!” remembered the Doctor, “That’s right! Let me tell you, dear old Queen Vicky was _not_ amused by that werewolf. Then you lot must—?”

“Torchwood’s job is to eliminate alien threats to the British empire.”

“Ah. Just Britain?” the Doctor raised an eyebrow. “It’s alright if they invade Australia, then?” Hartman ignored the question. “Well, _I’m_ no alien threat, and _Rose_ isn’t even an alien, so what are we doing here?”

“You’re going to identify some alien objects and tell us how to build more, plus help us with our latest project.”

The Doctor smirked, hands in his pockets. “Am I now?”

Hartman snapped her fingers, and the Doctor suddenly found himself at the wrong end of multiple guns.

“Yes, you are,” she said smugly, “As a favor to me for not killing you right now. Come along.” Two of the guards stepped forward to grip each of the Doctor’s arms.

“Kill me? What for?”

“Queen Victoria left instructions to kill a ‘Sir Doctor of TARDIS’ on sight. I’ve deemed it more prudent to let you live, so at the moment, you are not classified as an alien threat. I don’t often disobey our foundation charter. Don’t make me change that.”

“Yeah, thanks for that,” the Doctor snapped, struggling as the guards shoved him into the lift after Hartman. “Where’s Rose? What have you done with her?” Was a Dame Rose Tyler on the kill list next to a Sir Doctor?

“Rose?” The lift doors slid shut, and the lift ascended, leaving the armed guards below.

“You can’t hurt her, she’s human. A British citizen, even! There’s no reason to keep her here—”

“She’s a known associate of an alien, which makes her of Torchwood interest.”

The Doctor glared dangerously. “You leave her—”

“We haven’t hurt her, if that’s what you’re worried about. In fact, if you cooperate, it’s likely no one will get hurt today.”

“Yes, well, that’s the problem, you see,” said the Doctor, “Never been much good at cooperation, me. It’s gotten me into all sorts of trouble. Could call this a spot of trouble I suppose, but this is quite pathetic in comparison to Krevlockian prisons. Put you to shame, they would. Let Rose go and maybe I’ll give you some tips on stronger prisons. Not that this is a poor prison, necessarily. Not too shabby. Still leaves a lot to be desired, like increased levels of freedom. And bananas.”

“Are you going anywhere with this?” asked Hartman, sighing.

“I’m always going somewhere!” said the Doctor brightly, “Concerts, parades, coronations, prisons, riots, wars, peace, seasons, eras, years, planets, galaxies, stars—I went to an insane asylum once or twice. Not fun. Did you know most of your Earth psychiatrists qualify as insane on most planets? Not on Cariosudemens of course. The entire planet’s bent on psychoanalysis. _Breathe_ too heavily and they’ll diagnose you with a mental disorder and lock you up. I spent a bit of time in there too. Apparently their Prime Psychiatrist was blinded by my coat. Looking back, I can’t say I blame him….”

Hartman rolled her eyes and rubbed her temples exasperatedly.

“Oh, sorry, am I bothering you? I’ve been told I talk too much. Also that I’m rude. But at the moment, I don't particularly care, because I don’t much like you. So I think I’ll continue. Better yet, I’ll continue in Swedish! _Du är värre än en katt. Jag tycker inte om katter. Jag tyckte om katter förut, men enda sedan jag träffade en sjuksköterske-katt som försökte förgöra mänskligheten så har katter irriterat mig. Släpp oss nu, eller så skickar jag min metallhund på er_.”

“Shut him up until he’s willing to say something intelligent,” said Hartman, rolling her eyes.

The guard whirled around and punched him in the eye. Staggering slightly from the impact, the Doctor quickly recovered and resumed as if nothing had happened. “Oh, _brilliant_ idea, let’s hit the bloke who knows everything _in the head_! Are you _really_ that thick, or are you just—”

The guard smacked him across the jaw. Recoiling with a grunt, the Doctor felt a warm stickiness dripping from the corner of his mouth.

The Doctor pressed on, ignoring the throbbing in his skull. “Oh, still haven’t learned our lesson, have we, eh? Still hitting people with valuable information in the head? I don’t suppose—”

The guard prepared to hit him again, but Hartman stopped him. “Doctor,” she said smoothly.

“You called?” said the Doctor innocently.

“For every word that comes out of your mouth, I will break a finger,” said Hartman, “Fifty-fifty chance it’ll be your finger or Rose’s.”

The Doctor shut up, but glared murderously at the Torchwood leader. She smiled sweetly back. “Much better.” She stepped out as the lift doors opened, and the guards escorted the Doctor after her.

The Doctor’s eyes widened in amazement at the enormous warehouse they had entered. Guards bustled around, moving crates and examining their contents. Much to his horror, he _recognised_ many of them. A Jithaa sunglider hovered in one corner. A couple of guards were casually rummaging through a crate filled with Sontaran fragmentation grenades. A jar full of horribly familiar blue pills stood atop a Zygonian engine.

“As you can see, we have a lot of alien technology for you to examine. We’ll start with this.” She took the hefty tube in her hand, and held it out to him.

The Doctor took it, and inspected it for a few moments.

“Well, what is it?” said Hartman, impatiently folding her arms.

The Doctor glanced back at her, than raised his eyebrows and grinned smugly, completely silent.

Hartman rolled her eyes, “I give you permission to speak.”

“Well, then for starters, let me just tell you that _this_ appears to be a Traxifolerian sunghi.”

“Which is?”

“A musical instrument. This is a useless piece of junk unless you’ve got the more of the sunghi tubing. Then you can play a lovely ancient Traxifolerian melody like, ‘As Wide as the Dreksen’s Wings.’ I say ancient because the Traxifolerians themselves haven’t actually played sunghis in, ooh—seven thousand years? Of course, I’m only telling you all this because I’m hoping you’ll toddle off to play musical instruments and let me and Rose go.”

“Lovely. Now what’s this?” She held out a twisted piece of metal, badly singed, with buttons lining the side.

The Doctor didn’t answer, distracted by the sight of another couple of guards wheeling a familiar blue box away….

“Oi, that’s mine!” protested the Doctor as he saw his TARDIS taken from view.

“Not anymore,” said Hartman smugly, “If it’s alien, it’s ours.”

“You’ll never get inside it.”

Hartman shrugged. “You’d be surprised what we can and can’t get into. Now what is this?” She held the twisted metal up.

“Not telling. Now let us go.”

“We’ll negotiate that later. Now tell me what this is.”

“I’d much prefer the now to the later, if you don’t mind. _That_ may very well be a weapon powerful enough to blow up Belgium...or an old Martian checkers piece. But you’re not going to find out unless you take me to Rose.”

“There are aliens on Mars?” Hartman said, surprised.

“ _Well_ , I don’t know. I suppose you’ll have to build a shuttle and go there yourself. I recommend _not_ capturing and interrogating any Martians you happen to meet, or their friends. It’s not a good way to start a relationship—”

Hartman ignored him. “Right then, let’s look at the really interesting stuff, shall we? If you’ll come this way…”

The Doctor yanked his arms out of the guard’s grasp and walked alongside them instead as they left the warehouse. They returned to the lift and walked through a maze of hallways before stopping at a large wooden sliding door. Hartman pressed her ID card to the computer, and the door slid open.

Hovering inside above a platform was an enormous bronze sphere.

The Doctor stopped in his tracks, transfixed. “What is _that_?”

“We were hoping you’d tell us,” said Hartman, watching as the Doctor inched closer to the ladder leading up to the platform. “It just appeared out of thin air, right next to the disturbance, this morning. It has no mass, no –”

“Hold on,” the Doctor tore his gaze off the bronze ball, “Did you say this thing popped out of thin air right next to a _disturbance_? What kind of disturbance?”

“Our readings detected a slight distortion in space, high above London. We built this tower to reach it."

“Distortion in space? Well, that’s not good.”

“It isn’t?”

“It’s from the void. It’s a void ship.” the Doctor announced, running his hand through his hair in befuddlement.

“Ship? So we were right, there _is_ something inside. Now what’s the void?”

“The space between dimensions. Absolute emptiness. We have to send this thing back.”

“Send it back?” shrilled Hartman incredulously. “But it's remarkable technology! We'd lose the potential to make objects with no mass, no volume, no weight –”

“Yes! That’s the point!” said the Doctor exasperatedly, “You’re changing history! You have no idea what you’re messing with here—”

“Oh, I think we know a _bit_ more than you give us credit for,” said Hartman icily, “We’ve been working on a way to control the breach into—the void, you called it?—for weeks. It should be functional sometime today.”

“You _what_?! No, listen to me, you’re going to crack the universe apart! Oh, how do I explain this?” He rubbed his face for a moment. “Picture….Picture a pane of glass that represents all of reality. Experimenting with that disturbance, _opening_ the breach, would be like cracking the glass. Enough cracks, and the entire piece of glass will shatter.”

Hartman considered this for a moment. “But if we open it only once, just to get some readings—”

“Nononononono _no_ , you’re not listening! Opening it will—”

“Don’t interrupt, Doctor. I’ll skip fingers and go straight to arms and legs if you do.” The Doctor stepped towards her furiously, but the guards seized his arms. Hartman continued, “Tell me how to open the void.”

“No! I’m telling you, you could shred the universe to pieces!” The Doctor shouted pleadingly.

Hartman sighed. “Let’s take you to see Rose, shall we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The translation for the Swedish: You’re worse than a cat. I do not like cats. I used to like cats but ever since I met a nurse-cat trying to destroy the human race, cats have annoyed me. Now let us go before I sic my tin dog on you.


	3. All Sorts of Unpleasantness

The Doctor was shoved into a tiny cell with three metal walls. The remaining wall was of thick solid glass, and through it he could see an identical cell containing Rose, who brightened as soon as he entered.

“Doctor!” Rose ran to the glass and pressed her hands to it. “Are you alright? Your eye…” Her voice was slightly muffled through the thick glass, but the Doctor was relieved to see her alive.

“Oh, I’m just dandy,” said the Doctor, giving her a small grin that contrasted sharply with his cut jaw and fading black eye. His face turned solemn in a split second. “Did they hurt you?”

“No, they just asked me a few questions, and I told them I wouldn’t tell them anything until I could see you. What do they want?”

“Remember old Queen Vicky? Apparently she didn’t think banishment was enough. She created Torchwood - that's this lot - and their main objective is to protect England from aliens. I’m mentioned in their foundation charter as an official enemy.”

“Suppose you should be flattered then. Not many people have entire organizations created specifically to annoy them. No mention of me?”

“Kill on sight, actually. And apparently it doesn’t mention you, or at least, their leader doesn't remember a Dame Rose listed next to a Sir Doctor. Good thing, too, or they might have killed you already. According to old Yvonne, the only reason _I’m_ not on a dissection table right now is they’d rather have me teach them to use ‘alien weapons.’ Although I’m sure the dissecting table will come later…”

Rose rolled her eyes. “What is it with you and dissection tables?”

From behind her, sprinklers descended from Rose’s ceiling and spurted a light blue gas.

Alarmed, the Doctor pressed his hands to the wall. “Get down and try not to breathe it,” he urged her through the glass. “Did you catch a whiff? What does it smell like?”

Rose crouched on her hands and knees. “Sort of….fruity, I guess. Like berries. What is it?”

“Berries? Berries, berries, light blue and berries. Light blue and berries? But…wait…but that’s…No…No, no, no, _no_!” Ignoring Rose’s question, the Doctor crossed his cell and banged on his door in a panic. “Let her out! LET HER OUT!” He got no response. Running back to Rose, his muffled yells came through the glass. “Have you still got the sonic screwdriver?” She reached into her shirt and took it out. “Get your door open!”

“I already tried that! It’s dead-locked sealed or sommat!”

“Deadlock seal? That’s impossible, 21st century doesn’t have that kind of technology!” The level of panic in his voice rose with each passing second.

“Well, it won’t open!”

“Setting 458-C!” yelled the Doctor frantically. “Press it against the glass!”

Rose flicked it on and pressed the tip into the wall. A web of thin cracks slowly spread through the glass. Her eyes watered and her nose burned from the gas, which was filling her cell rapidly.

The Doctor ran his hands through his hair in frustration and groaned. “The glass is too thick! Keep pressing it, Rose, don’t stop!”

He backed up against the opposite wall, and then charged straight at the glass. Slamming into it with a thump, he tumbled to the ground in a heap.

“Doctor?!” Rose coughed. She felt light-headed. The room was starting to spin.

“It needs more of a vibration to crack! Just keep holding it!” He returned to the back wall and launched himself at the glass again. Dazed, he shook his head and stood to try again. Gas filled Rose’s cell so densely she was barely visible.

Coughing deeply, Rose slumped, leaning heavily on the glass. One hand still pressed the sonic screwdriver to the glass, slowly deepening the fissures.

The Doctor bolted back to his cell door, thumping on it desperately. “Stop the gas! Please, get her out of there!” He glanced back at Rose, whose eyes were struggling to stay open. “I’LL TELL YOU!” he screamed wildly at the cell door, “I’LL TELL YOU WHATEVER YOU WANT TO KNOW, I’LL DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, JUST GET HER OUT OF THERE!”

“Doctor…” He rushed towards Rose and pressed his hands to the glass. “Doctor,” she yelled hoarsely through the glass, “’S not your fault, you hear me? ’S not your….not your fault….”

“Rose? Rose, no!” He got to his feet and rammed his body into the glass with everything he had left. This time, the glass had weakened enough to shatter on impact, and he tumbled through the wall into Rose’s gas-filled cell with a cry of pain. He coughed when the gas scorched his lungs, and as he crawled to her he could feel his body switching to respiratory bypass. Shards of glass clung to his hair and clothes and pierced his palms and knees.

Rose had fallen over when the glass wall she’d been leaning against shattered. He scooped her into his arms and cradled her as he held a bloodied hand desperately to her throat, then pressed his ear to her chest.

He couldn’t feel a heartbeat.

His cell door crashed open as guards, suited and wearing gas masks, swarmed around him. A fist smacked him in his partially healed black eye, and the Doctor howled in agony as he instinctively clutched at his injury. The guards took his distraction as their opportunity to yank Rose from his grip. Two seized each of the Doctor’s arms and wrenched him to his feet. They hustled the struggling Time Lord out of the cell while another two dragged Rose out by the ankles across the broken glass after him.

The guards hauled the Doctor past Hartman, who watched him passively while he screamed his companion’s name as she was dragged in the opposite direction.

“ROSE, ROSE! _ROSE!_ ” When Rose had finally been dragged out of the Doctor’s sight, he screamed at Hartman. “You killed her, you killed her!” And then he lapsed into some language Hartman had never heard, flowing and ethereal. Chills surged down her spine with every syllable, and she briefly felt she had gone too far, that she’d crossed a line that shouldn’t have been crossed. But as they towed him away, the Doctor’s alien curses grew weaker and faded to wordless choked weeping, and Hartman’s smug confidence returned.

By the time they reached the interrogation room, the Doctor was silent, numbly letting himself be dragged inside. He put up no resistance as they stripped him of his shirt and suit jacket and strapped him to the table. He blinked as a piercingly bright light was shined in his face, but his eyes remained empty.

“Tell us how to open the void,” Hartman said breathlessly in anticipation.

The Doctor didn’t speak for several moments. Hartman stared, willing him to talk. His voice was heavy, but filled with venom. “The only reason I would ever tell you is so I could put you in there myself.”

Hartman waited for more, but the only sounds that came out of the alien were his muffled sobs. She nodded towards the back corner, where a technician was extracting wires from a machine.

A minute later, the Doctor was screaming.


	4. The Doctor's Friend

After going through three different scans, having most of his possessions confiscated for “security purposes,” and charming the receptionist, the American finally found himself in Yvonne Ingram’s office on the top floor.

“Captain Jack Harkness, Torchwood Three,” he introduced himself.

“Torchwood Three?” the blonde woman said disdainfully, rising from her desk and extending a hand. “We’ve been expecting you. Yvonne Hartman, head of Torchwood One.”

“Yvonne Hartman!” He took her hand and kissed it instead of shaking it. “Here to see you about the alien you have in custody—the Doctor?”

She raised an eyebrow at him, and then beckoned for him to follow her. They walked side-by-side through the labyrinth of hallways. “Heard about our alien, have you? Well, you can’t have him. He landed in London, we’re the ones who captured him, he’s—”

“Yours, I know,” Jack said smoothly. “Orders from above sent me here to examine him, take a few samples—” He almost stopped in his tracks as they passed two people rolling a woman on a stretcher along. “Who’s the blonde?”

“Friend of the alien’s. Londoner Rose Tyler. We needed something to control him that was less risky than actually hurting him.” She sighed. “Didn’t work, though. He finally broke right before her ‘death,’ but we didn’t get much out of him except bits of an alien language, which we’re still trying to translate.”

“You killed her?” Jack’s throat tightened.

“Oh, no, not really!” she said quickly, laughing slightly, “She’s only unconscious. We couldn’t _really_ kill her; she’s a British citizen, but he wasn’t cooperating and we had to show him we were serious. We used a knock-out gas with similar properties to a fatal gas the Metatraxi used two years ago. Should wear off in a bit. Wipe her memory, package her off to where she came from, no harm done.”

Jack carefully filed away this information. “So where’s the Doctor then? We don’t need all of him—just a blood sample and a few questions.”

“I figured as much. I can get you a sample, but you’ll have to wait for the questions. As I’ve told you, he’s been completely uncooperative, plus at the moment he’s in some sort of coma.”

Jack took in a sharp breath. “Coma? What’d you do to him?”

“Well, after the Tyler girl’s supposed death, he wasn’t responding to questions—at least, not in any language we recognized—so we had to resort to physically hurting him.”

“You tortured him,” he stated flatly.

“We need what he knows, and we’re running out of options. Our project goes live in a few hours. He still hasn’t said anything in any language we recognize since we started.”

Jack and Hartman boarded the lift. Hartman pressed her card to the computer screen, and the lift began its descent.

“What information do you need so bad?” asked Jack.

The corners of Hartman’s lips twitched up smugly, as if talking to a naughty child. “Need-to-know basis, Harkness. The higher-ups may have said you can examine him, even take samples, but I’m not just going to hand over all our secrets, am I?”

The lift stopped, and Hartman led him down the hallway, past some plastic sheets that hid construction work.

“I’ll give you mine if you’ll give me yours.” He forced a smile.

She raised an eyebrow. “I assume you’re not just talking about Torchwood projects.”

“I might be.” They stopped in front of a door with a key-card lock.

Hartman slid her card through the slot and opened the door. “Let’s get you your blood sample, shall we?”

Jack struggled to keep his face expressionless when he saw the man pinned to the table by thick steel bindings. On his bare chest laid two wires connected to an ECG measuring both heartbeats, which at least appeared to be beating normally.

Not quite as shocking (but still quite a jolt) was the new face. Jack had seen the pictures, but he couldn’t quite match the big ears with the big hair. So it was true then, the myth that Time Lords could change their faces. Was the Doctor supposed to be that thin? He definitely shouldn’t have been that pale. His jaw had dried blood on it, and he had a faded black eye that contrasted sharply with his nearly-white skin. Red, slightly charred spots scorched random spots on his skin all over his torso and arms. Dark bruises covered his ribs and extended down to his hips. He was breathing, but his breaths were ragged and shallow.

“Health status?” Hartman called briskly to the technician by the terminal.

“He healed remarkably fast once we stopped—the second heart’s resumed beating and both are back to normal, electrical burns are healing faster than similar wounds inflicted on a human, ribs are—”

The Doctor’s eyes flashed open without warning. “Get him—get him out of here,” his raspy voice pleaded, “Get him away from me!”

“Doctor—” Jack took a step towards him and the Doctor flinched, scooting himself as far away as possible.

“You’re _wrong_! Wrongwrong _wrong_. Go away, get away from me, _leave me alone_!”

“He’s speaking English!” Hartman practically squealed in excitement, moving closer, forgetting Jack was even in the room. The technician rushed back to the monitor, eyes lit up with excitement. “The sphere, Doctor!” Hartman said breathlessly, “Tell me about the void and the sphere!”

The Doctor’s eyes stared wildly at Jack as he took one more step towards him. “No, no, get away! Please, no!”

Hartman turned to Jack furiously. “Why is he so afraid of you?”

“I—I don’t know,” Jack answered, honestly confused.

Hartman turned to the technician. “Turn that thing back on. I’m not leaving until he talks.”

The technician tore his eyes away from the alien, gathered some wires, and hurried over to the Doctor, moving to reattach the ends to the alien’s skin. Immediately, Jack drew out his smuggled stun gun and fired.

Swerving at the sound of the technician dropping, Hartman’s eyes widened with shock. “Trait—!” The second blast hit her square in the chest, and she too dropped.

Jack turned to the alien on the table. “Doctor?”

The Doctor shuddered. “Sonic screwdriver….in her jacket,” he whispered labouredly, closing his eyes.

Jack bent over Hartman’s unconscious form and reached a hand into her blazer.

“And don’t dawdle, Jack,” said the Doctor shakily. “I know you will. Setting 47-A.”

Jack extracted the sonic screwdriver. “It _is_ you! Couldn’t believe it when I saw the pictures—I thought the whole regeneration thing was just a myth. And no thanks, I don’t like people who torture my friends. You are still a friend, right?”

The Doctor kept his eyes closed. “Yeah, sure, but…I’m sorry, Jack. It’s just…it hurts to look at you. You’re like an optical illusion. Time is all… _bendy_ around you. You’re impossible.”

“Because I’m inexplicably immortal? Care to explain that?” Jack said as he fiddled with the Doctor’s restraints.

“Rose did it,” he said almost reverently. “I sent her off the station, but she looked into the heart of the TARDIS to get back to me. She absorbed the time vortex, destroyed all the Daleks with it. Tried to bring you back to life, but she overdid it. You’re a _fact,_ a fixed point in time. You can’t die at all now.”

Jack spent a moment absorbing this information. “What happened after that?”

“The vortex was burning her up. I took it out of her. It killed me instead—I died and regenerated. She'd forgotten what she’d done. How utterly fantastic she was. Brilliant, fantastic, wonderful Rose…” His eyes clenched shut even tighter. “They killed her because of me and it’s all my fault…”

“Doc, she’s not dead.”

His eyes flashed open, although he winced slightly as he stared at Jack incredulously. “I was there, I saw it, I _felt_ it. She had no heartbeat. They pumped Racheson Gas into her cell. That stuff’s worse than nerve gas, goes straight to the brain and activates the pain receptors. It’s one of the most painful ways to die in the universe and they did it to her.”

Jack got the bands undone. The Doctor groaned as he tried to lift himself off the table, and Jack moved to help him up.

“It wasn’t Racheson Gas. Couldn’t have been.” Jack helped him back into his shirt and suit jacket.

“It was light blue, fast-acting, and fruity-smelling. Just like Racheson gas.” The Doctor finished buttoning his shirt and reached for his jacket.

“They’ve heard of it, but trust me, they don’t have any! They were just trying to trick you—”

“How would you know?” the Doctor demanded, fully dressed. He plucked the sonic screwdriver from Jack’s hand and aimed it at him threatingly. “You couldn’t have just gotten in here on charm alone, why did they let you in?”

Jack paused. “I work for Torchwood. But before you say anything, Yvonne told me—”

“You _work_ for Torchwood?” The Time Lord was absolutely furious.

“Different branch, in Cardiff, guarding the rift. I came straight here once I heard they had you—”

Suddenly a screeching alarm pierced the room, causing Jack to jump slightly. “How’d they find out we escaped that quickly? You haven’t even opened the door yet!”

Turning away from Jack, the Doctor sonicked the door open. “Guess you don’t know everything about Torchwood, Jack.”

“But I do know what I told you—Rose isn’t dead. Hartman herself told me she was just unconscious.”

The Doctor stopped, one hand still resting on the half-open door. “Are you sure?” he said, not turning to face Jack. “Are you absolutely sure?” His breath hitched painfully in hope. He’d only been listening to her heart for a few seconds. If it wasn't Racheson gas, then maybe....

“Positive! She’s alive.”

The Doctor turned around and grinned. “Brilliant!” he laughed weakly, relieved. “Brilliant, absolutely…” He took a deep breath, grimacing as he did so. Fresh determination shone from his eyes. “Right then. Find Rose, find the TARDIS, send that void ship back where it can from, close the breach, burn this whole ruddy building to the ground. Good plan, I like plans.”

“First step might be to hide, then,” said Jack as they passed the area under construction, cringing from the siren. “Preferably somewhere quiet.”

“Quiet would be lovely—” The Doctor stumbled with a groan, hand pressed to his side. Jack caught him before he fell to the ground.

“Are you okay?”

“Might have a fractured rib,” the Doctor gasped, “Or two. Possibly more. But no more than five or six, I’m sure. I’ll be fine…eventually.”

Jack wrapped one of the Doctor’s arms around his shoulders and helped him stagger along. “Easy there, Doc,” said Jack, “Finally got you right where I want you, and you’re too injured to enjoy it.”

The Doctor squeezed his eyes shut again. “Don’t, Jack. Just don’t.”

“C’mon,” Jack whined, “Not only do you a have a new body, but I made it through seeing you shirtless without a single comment!”

“And now you haven’t. You already give me a headache, don’t make it any worse.”

“Exactly how bad is this ‘immortal fact’ aversion, anyway?”

The Doctor winced as Jack jiggled a door knob handle only to find it locked. “Better, now that I’ve gotten a bit more used to it….”

As the Doctor prepared to hand Jack the sonic screwdriver, the kidnapping commander with the unfortunately large nose turned the corner.

All three men froze. Jack went for his stun gun, but the other man was faster. He fired.


	5. Rose Wreaks Havoc

Rose opened her eyes to find herself lying on a stretcher in a blindingly white hospital room. Was she in the med center of the TARDIS? What had happened? Where was….

The Doctor! Where was he, what had they done to him? The gas….Torchwood had meant to kill her, but she was still alive. Had the Doctor gotten through the glass in time? Had—

“She’s awake early! Hurry, we need another dose.” A brunette woman in a lab coat quickly approached Rose, placing a hand on her shoulder to keep her from getting up. “It’s alright,” she said to Rose, smiling. “You’re safe.”

“Where….Where’s the Doctor?” Rose asked, frowning. Something wasn’t right. Why was that woman smiling like that?

“He’s waiting for you. We just need to process you before you can leave.”

“Process me? But—”

“Got it, it’s online!” said a man, grabbing a tube off a large machine in the corner. The woman nodded.

“What’s that?” Rose demanded, fully awake now.

“It’s alright, dear. We’re just going to put you to sleep for awhile and then you’ll wake up safe at home, and you won’t remember any of this horrible place.”

“Where’s the Doctor?” Rose asked again, suddenly terrified. The man came closer with the tube.

“Just relax…” said the smiling woman, extracting a syringe from her lab coat.

“No!” Rose rolled herself off the stretcher and kicked. The stretcher hit the woman in the stomach, making her double over and gasp as the wind was knocked out of her. The syringe tumbled from her hand. Rose snatched it, flung the door open, and bolted as fast as she could down the hallway.

She heard the other man in the room yelling and chasing her, but with all her running experience, he had no prayer of catching up.

Randomly jiggling door handles in search for a place to hide, Rose discovered all the doors were locked or at least required some sort of password. She was relieved to not run into anybody, but a nagging voice in the back of her mind wondered where everyone was.

Oh. She finally got one door at the end of the hall to open, only to find it crammed with people in lab coats gathered around a large blue police box. Startled, they all looked up as she opened the door.

“Well, there’s the TARDIS, anyway,” Rose said brightly, then shut the door and resumed running. Alarms blared through the hallway as she rounded another corner, then immediately turned around and ran back as she met with more security guards.

A lift at the end of the hall opened. Rose snatched the card from the surprised man in a lab coat inside, shoved him out of the lift, pressed the card to the computer, and pushed random buttons. The doors slammed shut just as the guards reached them. Giggling slightly in the rush of adrenaline coursing through her body and still clutching the syringe, Rose stepped off at the first floor the lift stopped at, and took off running before Torchwood could call it back.

Chest heaving, Rose rounded another corner and slid to a stop.

She had almost run straight into the back of a man pointing a gun at the Doctor and— _Jack_?!

The man fired straight at Jack. The captain yelled as the bullet penetrated his chest, and he crumpled to the floor. The Doctor, who now had nothing to lean on, toppled over. His eyes moved in horror from the gun to Rose. He opened his mouth to shout a warning, but Rose didn’t need one.

She launched herself straight at the man who shot Jack, screaming like a banshee in outrage, and stabbed him in the neck with the syringe. The gun clattered to the floor as Rose tackled him, and he savagely yanked the empty syringe from his neck and slammed her against the wall, wrapping his fingers around her throat.

“Rose!” the Doctor tried to stand, then cried out as his knees buckled and he fell back to the floor.

Seconds after being stabbed, Big Nose’s grip loosened as his eyes rolled back into his head. Choking, Rose shoved him away, and he collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

Stepping over the limp body, Rose dashed to the relieved Doctor and knelt beside him, enveloping him in a hug.

“You’re ali—ah, ooh, ouch!” the Doctor yelped. Rose immediately let go.

“You’re hurt! What happened?” she asked, voice still a bit hoarse from her near-strangling.

“Just some fractured ribs. Your hug is most definitely returned, though.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “Are you—I thought—I thought you were dead.”

“It’s alright, I’m fine, see?” she said, smiling sadly. “Woke up in some sort of lab, right before they were about to wipe my memory. Got out of there, came down the lift, ran into you and Jack….” Eyes shining, she turned to the dead captain, who was sprawled next to them in a pool of blood. “Jack…I can’t believe it…” Her hand brushed his cheek.

Jack gasped and jerked into a sitting position. Rose shrieked.

“Aw, another shirt ruined,” he said sadly, inspecting the blood stain splattered across his chest.

“You—but you were…Jack?” Rose stammered.

“Some greeting that is! Hello—”

“If you don’t mind,” said the Doctor, rolling his eyes. “We need to get to the TARDIS. I—” He tried to stand up again, and winced as he failed.

Jack and Rose each wrapped one of the Doctor’s arms around their shoulders and helped him stand.

“TARDIS…is in the warehouse….” groaned the Doctor.

“They must’ve moved it then; I just saw it,” said Rose, “This way…Jack, I thought he killed you!” They staggered in the direction Rose had come from.

“Oh, he did,” said Jack nonchalantly, “Did I mention I’m immortal?”

“What?!”

“Explanations later,” begged the Doctor, face crinkled in pain. “We—” The alarm suddenly went completely silent. “Ooh, that’s not good.”

“We need to hide, fast,” said Jack.

“Wait, wait,” the Doctor gritted his teeth. “Rose, do you have your TARDIS key?”

“Yeah. Where’s yours?”

“They took it. It’s inside a bio-openable box, so they’ll need me to get to it, but…point is, I don’t have it.” Jack opened his mouth to make some smart comment, but the Doctor cut him off. “Never mind, just give it to me.”

Rose took it off from around her neck and handed it to him.

“Jack, give me the stun gun.”

“Doc, it’s our only weapon—”

“I need it.” Reluctantly, Jack handed over his stun gun. Grimacing with every labored movement, the Doctor aimed his sonic screwdriver at Jack’s gun, prying it apart. The high-pitched sound seemed horribly magnified in the sudden silence, and Rose and Jack both glanced anxiously at each other and down the hallway. Voices were approaching, although it might be another minute or two until their owners appeared.

“There,” said the Doctor, tossing the remains of Jack’s stun gun to the floor and holding up the TARDIS key triumphantly. He pulled Rose closer and put the key around both their necks. “Bit awkward, but it’ll do.”

“Is that—whoa, it is!” said Jack, his eyes crossing slightly when he looked in their direction.

“What is it?” asked Rose.

“Perception filter,” said the Doctor woozily, “Makes people not want to notice us. As long as we wear it, anyone we pass will just overlook us.”

“So you mean we’re invisible?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Any room for me in there?” asked Jack, trying to focus on them and going cross-eyed in the attempt.

“No,” said the Doctor, holding his side gingerly, “Fortunately for you, unless Hartman’s already woken up, the rest of Torchwood should trust you. We’ll follow you up to the TARDIS.”

“Floor 23, fourth door on the right,” said Rose, quietly because the voices from the hall were very close.

“Got it,” Jack muttered, as a dark-skinned woman and brown-haired man rounded the corner.

“Who are you?” demanded the woman on the left.

Smiling charmingly, Jack flashed his Torchwood ID. “Captain Jack Harkness, Torchwood Three. I recommend you not go down there; Hartman puked all over the floor and she’s not too happy right now.”

“Hartman puked? That’s rich!” laughed the man on the right. “Come on, Adeola, I’d rather not run into her.”

Whispering and snickering to each other, the couple turned right, avoiding the hallway where Big Nose had been left.

“Good, bought us a bit more time,” muttered the Doctor. With the Doctor leaning heavily on Rose, they followed behind Jack as he confidently strode to the lift.

He left the doors open for a while before letting them close. “Are you in here? You okay?”

“Yeah,” answered Rose, although the Doctor’s eyes were still clenched shut, and his face was paling more with each breath. Had Rose not been holding him steady, he would have been swaying dangerously.

The lift doors opened, revealing armed guards clustered in the hallway.

“Captain Jack Harkness, Torchwood Three,” Jack showed his ID. Careful not to touch anyone, Rose maneuvered herself and the Doctor through the throng of guards. Jack used his ID to open the fourth door on the right, and strode inside.

"Torchwood Three, Level One," Jack said authoritatively, waving his ID. "Clear out—I'd like to look at the ship alone."

A few of the scientists were on the brink of protest.

“That’s an order. Do you want me to tell my superiors how you decided to ignore orders?” thundered Jack. Casting almost lustful looks back at the TARDIS, and in some cases, at Jack, the scientists cleared out.

As soon as they had gone, Rose yanked the key off from around their necks and handed it to Jack. “Get it open, fast,” she pleaded. She was practically carrying the Doctor, who had slumped against her, barely even conscious.

"There you are, old girl," the Doctor murmured absently, stroking the door weakly as Jack fiddled with the key. The TARDIS seemed to shudder violently as Jack put the key into the keyhole. “Ooh, she doesn’t like you….”

Jack slid the key in and pried the doors open.

Once inside, Rose hurried the Doctor over to the infirmary while Jack headed to the wardrobe to replace his shirt. Returning to the console room, Jack studied the familiar machinery.

The TARDIS' comforting echo stirred long-ago memories in Jack's mind. It'd been over a century since he'd set foot in here. Back when he'd been mortal, but had felt so invincible. So much had changed since then. His eyes ran over the coral columns and the undecipherable writing on the screens. The Doctor may have changed his face, but the TARDIS at least, felt unchangeable, even if it shared the Doctor’s aversion.

Now, did he remember how to work the outer view screen?

* * *

“Get the….occiferous regenerator….bottom drawer,” the Doctor gasped. Leaning against the wall, he fumbled with the buttons on his jacket and shirt one-handed while Rose dug through the bottom drawer.

“Just sit on the stretcher, yeah?” asked Rose, grabbing the device. “I’ll get your shirt.”

The Doctor collapsed on the stretcher and let Rose remove his shirt. She gasped when she saw his injuries. “What did they—”

“Doesn’t matter. Press that button there…”

Rose held the occiferous regenerator up to his chest and pushed the button. The Doctor screamed, and Rose immediately switched it off, horrified.

“No, no, keep going, Rose, you’ve _got_ to keep going.” Rose bit her lip, then turned it back on. She shut her eyes and didn’t open them until the Doctor’s moans had stopped.

“Thank you,” the Doctor sighed. “Much better. Now stick on that patch; it’ll help the burns heal faster.”

Rose stuck it on. “Are you sure you’re—”

“I’m _fine_ , Rose,” he snapped. The topic of his health was apparently off-limits.

“Great….Then how about explaining how Jack is here when you told me he was dead!”

“Well, technically I told you he was rebuilding the Earth….”

“I _thought_ he was dead! You let me believe he was and you let me mourn him— _Why_?”

The Doctor sighed. This was going to take a bit of explaining.

One long explanation about Bad Wolf, time vortex absorption, and the exact events that transpired between tricking Rose into leaving and the moment when she awoke on the TARDIS floor later, Rose was stunned.

“I have some apologies to make, then,” she said, her voice wavering. “I’m sorry I….killed you.”

“Rose—”

“I’m sorry for killing you and being such a stupid ape and—”

“Rose!” She stopped, tears ready to spill.

“Rose,” the Doctor started again, “I meant what I said, right before I regenerated. You were absolutely, utterly fantastic. I don’t regret dying for you, and I’d do it again. Alright?”

Rose’s cheeks were wet as she nodded. Then she bit her lip and smiled playfully. “So you kissed me. Seems a shame I can’t remember that.”

The Doctor hesitated for a moment, considering. He took a deep breath. “Do you want to fix that?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Oh, yes!”

Much to her delight, Rose discovered that the Doctor was brilliant at fixing things.


	6. The Lever Room

Jack had the picture of what was outside the TARDIS up and running by the time his friends returned, Rose smiling with relief and the Doctor almost bouncing, beaming like all the good in the universe was being showered on him all at once. They were holding hands, Jack noted. That wasn’t unusual, but something was…different between the two of them. He grinned to himself, wondering if the Doctor had finally admitted it before or after he'd regenerated. If it was before, it _would_ explain why he'd gone from big ears to pretty boy....

"You alright?” he asked, noting that the Doctor’s color was returning, “You said it'd take awhile for you to heal."

"Oh, it will to heal _completely_ , but most of it's patched up now," said the Doctor, letting go of Rose's hand to begin pushing buttons. The TARDIS began to dematerialize. "I can breathe at least."

"No running," ordered Rose, stifling her smile.

"Pfft," scoffed the Doctor, applying the mallet to the TARDIS' controls, "Like that's likely. I'll have run a marathon by the time the day's over. Ooh, you got the outside viewer up and running!" He turned his attention to it as the TARDIS rematerialized. The screen showed a wide room empty of people, but filled with an enormous bronze sphere.

"Don't usually have that thing on, sort of takes the fun out of visiting a random place if you know what it looks like before you go out." He plucked his overcoat off the support strut and put it on, and Rose and Jack followed him as he stepped outside the TARDIS and up to the large bronze sphere in the middle.

"What _is_ that?" said Jack. Rose stared up at it, not even blinking, completely entranced.

"That's from the void. Messes with my head almost as much as you do, Jack," explained the Doctor, yanking wires out of a panel on the wall.

"Void?" questioned Rose, managing to tear her gaze away from the bronze sphere.

"The void's supposed to be another dimension," explained Jack, awestruck. Without noticing what he was doing, he slowly climbed the ladder leading up to the platform to get closer.

"Don't touch it!" ordered the Doctor, stopping his sonic-ing for a brief moment to glare at Jack, who backed away from the ladder. "The void isn't just another dimension," explained the Doctor, resuming his work with the wires, "It's the space between dimensions. It's empty and lifeless and....well, void of everything."

"Like a black hole?" asked Rose.

"Sort of, yeah….Well, not really. Torchwood apparently has been fishing things out from a crack between reality and the void. These cracks pop up all over the universe on occasion, but they usually heal themselves fairly quickly. Torchwood discovered this one and they've been poking at it, making it larger. It's a wound in reality that's been inflamed. If they keep at it, they could eventually rip the universe apart. This thing," he waved his screwdriver-free hand towards the sphere, “Is a void ship. Traveling outside time and space.”

“What’s inside?” asked Jack, trying to keep his gaze from sliding back to the sphere.

“I don’t know,” said the Doctor darkly, splicing another wire, “But nothing good. And it doesn’t belong here.”

“So this thing just fell through the crack?”

“Or created it,” the Doctor mused. Extracting two last wires from the tangle, he held them out to Rose. "But," he said cheerfully, "It hasn’t been here long, and the breach is still open, so all I have to do is revert it back to its source—slip it back in through the crack, so to speak—and I can send this thing back to the void! Hold this, will you, Rose?"

Rose took the wires and the Doctor flicked a setting on the sonic screwdriver and fused the wires together. With a sound like it was being sucked through a straw, the sphere vanished. A gloom seemed to lift from the room as soon as it was gone.

"There we go! I _love_ reversing polarities, haven't gotten to do that in _ages_! Now I just need to find the crack and seal it up before it opens again and the ship or anything else leaks over."

"Uh, Doc, I think we've got company," said Jack, pointing at the computer screen on a nearby table, which displayed the hallway directly outside the door. A hallway which was currently now filled with a swarm of men with guns, led by a very angry-looking Yvonne Hartman.

"TARDIS, now!" yelled the Doctor, but the door swooshed open. Instantly all three found guns— _lots_ of guns—trained on them.

"Doctor," said Hartman coolly before noticing the sphere's absence. Her eyes bulged out of their sockets. "Where is it?" she shrieked. "What have you done to it?!"

"I sent it back,” said the Doctor, “I sent it back and I’m closing up the void. And you, Yvonne Hartman, you get one last warning, one last chance. Stop experimenting with the void. Stop trying to rip the universe to shreds, or I _will_ stop you."

There was a brief pause as Hartman quickly smothered her fury. Then in an icy voice she ordered, "Shoot the traitor Harkness."

And for the second time that day, Jack Harkness died. He fell to the ground with a cry, six bullets embedded in his chest less than a second after Hartman gave the order. Rose screamed.

"You didn't have to do that!" yelled the Doctor furiously, looking at his fallen friend.

"He's released an alien prisoner, betrayed his country. A lot like another someone in this room."

The Doctor stepped in front of Rose just as every gun swiveled to exactly where she was now standing.

The Doctor spread his arms out protectively. "But you're not going to shoot me, are you? You still want me alive."

"Oh, but alive is relative, isn't it? I’ve read the files, I know the routine. We shoot you, you die, you get a new face. And I'm willing to do that all day until you'll listen to orders. Aim.”

The gunmen aimed.

"You mean until I run out," said the Doctor quietly, eying the guns.

"What?" This came from two voices, Hartman's disbelievingly, Rose's in a horrified whisper.

"I'm on my last regeneration. You kill me now, I stay dead. Fine by me if you'd like to send 900 plus years of alien knowledge and experience, not to mention sheer genius, down the drain."

Hartman hesitated, unsure of whether to believe him or not. Meanwhile, the Doctor gently took Rose’s hand behind him, nudging them both closer to the TARDIS, careful to completely shield her body with his own.

"Oh, come on, how many of me have you met, honestly?"

"Just you," said Hartman reluctantly, "But we have pictures of four possible others."

"Really! Only four?" said the Doctor, still inching himself and Rose ever closer to the TARDIS. "Wonder which ones? Was he wearing a scarf? Or were any of them ginger? Ooh! Or did one of them dress in a ridiculous cricket outfit? I rather liked being him, although he was a bit overly obsessed with the sport, bless him. And I don’t know _what_ he was thinking with that celery. The chances he’d need it were very slim. I mean, it’s high in fiber, which is a very important nutrient for anyone, even Time Lords, but still…." Behind him, he nudged Rose ever closer to the TARDIS.

“If you attempt to enter the box I _will_ have you shot,” said Hartman. The Doctor froze.

Hand gripping Rose’s tighter, he said, “Well, yeah, you could. But what’s the point of that? You’re still missing the big picture.”

“And what’s that?”

“ _I’m_ trying to save the universe. Since you happen to live there, it stands to reason you might consider helping me fix your mess instead of trying to kill me.”

“Doctor, Jack,” whispered Rose from behind him. Jack’s eyes had flown open, but Hartman and the gunmen were too focused on the Doctor to notice.

The Doctor squeezed her hand in acknowledgment and continued, “So how about pointing me in the direction of this disturbance, so I can close it?”

“Don’t think so,” said Hartman, “In fact, I have a whole department working on opening it again. We should see something in about…” she glanced at her watch, “Two minutes.”

The Doctor’s eyes almost bulged out of their sockets. “You can’t! Don’t you realize what you’re doing? You’re taking a hole in the universe and making it bigger! It needs to heal before more things start bleeding through! _Bad_ things! Bad _world-destroying_ things! Oh, look at that human, that looks tasty, mmm yes it is, let’s have another things!”

Hartman scoffed. “I’ve heard the legends of the Doctor, lording his alien authority over the rights of man. You just want to stunt humanity’s growth, keep your own superiority! You can’t stand the thought of us knowing more than you.”

“Oh, yeah, it has nothing to do with preserving timelines, or that you’re on the brink of blowing up all of reality, or that you’re only interested in what you can use for a weapon!” The Doctor suddenly switched to an eerie calm. “Oh, by the way, speaking of weapons, I believe my friend is holding one pointed at your head.”

Hartman and the gunmen whirled around. Jack Harkness, still covered in blood, stood over an unconscious gunman and was holding the man’s rather large gun aimed at Hartman’s head.

“You’re dead!” said Hartman in disbelief.

“If I had a quid for every time I heard that…” sighed Jack.

Rose opened the TARDIS and stepped inside.

“Stop him!” yelled Hartman as the Doctor cheekily waved at her before climbing in after Rose and shutting the door securely behind them.

“Do and I’ll blow your head off,” said Jack cheerfully. But as the TARDIS dematerialized, his face fell.

“How are you even alive?” demanded Hartman, eyes flitting between the gun and the spot where the TARDIS had sat.

“Like I’d tell you. Hands up.” Jack couldn’t believe it—he’d rescued the Doctor from torture, died twice for him in one day, reunited him with a gorgeous blonde, and granted them safe passage to the TARDIS, and the guy _still_ had the nerve to leave him behind? _Again_?

And then the screeching sound of the TARDIS returned. The console room flashed before Jack’s eyes, then disappeared, revealing Hartman’s shocked face. The TARDIS reappeared, and then disappeared once more around him. He heard Hartman cry, “Fire!” just as the console finally solidified around him one last time.

Jack immediately found himself enveloped by Rose.

“Rose, wait until he drops the gun _before_ you hug him, will you?” called the Doctor from the other side of the console. Wearing his glasses, he studied a computer screen intently.

Jack tossed the gun aside and hugged Rose back. “Thought you were leaving me behind again.”

“If he did, I’d kill him. And the TARDIS seems okay with you now.” Rose broke the hug and studied the fresh bloodstain on his shirt. “You really are immortal.”

“Yep, no tricks. Did he…?”

“Yeah, he told me, when we were fixing him up.” She bit her lip. “I’m not sorry you didn’t die today, but I’m sorry for…overdoing it, I suppose.”

Jack took a deep breath. “I know you didn’t mean to. I mean, it absolutely repulses Pretty Boy over there,” he jerked a thumb in the Doctor’s direction, “But I'm making the most of it. It’s come in handy a couple times, and it makes a _great_ conversation starter at parties. I don’t blame you.”

“Ha! Found it!” proclaimed the Doctor, dashing to flick switches.

“Found what?”

“The breach! If we’re lucky, we might be able to stop them!” With another pull of a lever, the TARDIS rematerialized in a room which, according to the outer view screen, contained two large levers by a blank stretch of blindingly white wall. Before it sat a group of scientists at computers, all of whom sat frozen at their terminals, mouths open as they gawked at the TARDIS in wonder.

The Doctor tossed his coat over a coral strut before stepping from his ship, Rose and Jack on his heels. “Right, hello, I’m the Doctor, and I’m here to tell you that if you turn on that program the universe may very well implode, explode, or other frightening –ode words. Do not, under any circumstances, activate that program. The void, or disturbance, or breach, or whatever you want to call it, _stays closed_.”

“Who are you again?” demanded a woman whom the Doctor vaguely remembered seeing in the hallway earlier.

“The Doctor. And you are?”

“Adeola Oshodi. What do you mean, the universe will explode?”

Before the Doctor could say another word, Adeola’s computer flashed to a video of Hartman’s face. “Lever Room, finish implementing the program immediately. Is the Doctor there?”

“Don’t!” Jack shook his head frantically.

“Er, yeah, he’s here,” said Adeola, perturbed.

“Quick, activate it now! Don’t let him stop you. We’ll be there shortly.” Glancing to each other in alarm, the frantic scientists quickly began typing on their computers.

“Do we look armed and dangerous to you?” Rose protested.

“Listen to me, you have to stop!” pleaded the Doctor. The furious typing continued. “You, Adeola, tell them to stop!”

“Can’t,” she replied, not even glancing from her screen, “I’m sorry, but we’ve been working too long on this to give up now.”

“ _Humans_!” the Doctor cried in frustration. “Stop it! Stop it, now!” Taking out the sonic, he pointed it at the nearest computer, which fizzled and died. The dark-haired man who had been working on it backed away, eyes wide. This only encouraged the others to type faster, determined to finish their commands.

“Get the levers!” the Doctor yelled, aiming his screwdriver at the next computer. Rose and Jack rushed to the levers, which were pulling themselves, on either side of the room.

“Doctor, it’s not working!” yelled Rose as she and Jack struggled to push the levers back to their original position.

Two of the scientists sprung from their fried computers and tackled the Doctor, wrestling him to the ground. The sonic screwdriver clattered to the floor and rolled away as Rose and Jack released their unyielding levers.

Hartman, flanked by armed soldiers, burst into the room just as a female intercom voice said, “Online.” Rose and Jack rushed over to help the Doctor, who was pinned to the floor by the two scientists. A brilliant white light flooded the room.

“It’s working!” exclaimed Hartman, as she covered her eyes to keep from being blinded. “It’s working!”

That was when the two blue, blurry figures appeared next to her. She screamed, and the guards around her fired several rounds into the new arrivals. The bullets passed straight through, almost hitting the two scientists Rose and Jack had pried off the Doctor.

“What have you done?” thundered the Doctor. A third figure materialized next to the other two, joining them in synchronized marching in place. “What the _blazes_ have you stupid apes done?!”


	7. Jack and Jackie

Jackie Tyler hated the moments right after her daughter’s visits. The flat seemed so much emptier after she and that awfully rude Doctor of hers left.

Well, nothing cheered a woman up like shopping.

The black SUVs the Doctor had been so worried about were gone, Jackie noted as she walked to the bus stop. Silly Clock King (or something like that) was so busy putting her daughter in danger, he’d started to see it everywhere he went. Paranoid, that’s what he was.

She’d already bought more pairs of shoes than she could afford—wait until Howard saw these heels!—when she saw a pair of blue sneakers she knew Rose would love. With only the slightest hesitation at the price, Jackie bought them. She knew Rose couldn’t be persuaded to stay home by a pair of sneakers, but what was the harm in trying? And why couldn’t Rose stay in London, anyway? She’d be perfectly safe, instead of running for her life from Vikings or cat people or Raxi—Raxi—Raxi _somethings_.

Jackie was walking back to the bus stop loaded with her purchases when she felt somebody brush by her. “Hey, you! Aren’t you going to apol—”

That was when Jackie noticed that the person who had brushed by her was not a person at all, but rather a blue _thing_ , shaped like a person and slightly out of focus. And it had not brushed by her as much as it had walked _through_ her.

As more and more of the _things_ appeared, Jackie’s screams were lost among the thousands of Londoners who quite suddenly found themselves in a crowd twice the size it had been before.

* * *

Inside Torchwood Tower, chaos reigned.

“What are these things?!” shrieked Hartman as a fourth blurred figure arrived from thin air.

“I don’t know!” snapped the Doctor as Rose and Jack helped him up. “They could be anything, from any dimension or parallel universe! They could be radioactive, they could be poisonous, they could be killers—”

The fourth figure marched towards one of the guards, a terrified young man who was holding his gun shakily. Just as the figure was close enough to touch him, the guard fired. Just as they had before, the bullets passed directly through the blurry figure, ricocheting haphazardly off the walls. One of them impacted the base of one of the levers, sending sizzling circuits flying out of place. Rose cried out as she felt a white-hot streak trace a line on her arm. One of the bullets had just grazed her.

Obliviously to the bullets, the figure passed directly through the quivering guard and proceeded with the other three to march out of the room through the wall.

“They’re ghosts!” the young guard hollered hysterically. “ _Ghosts_!”

His gun sparked and died in his hands as the Doctor, fury building in his eyes, pointed his screwdriver at it. Jack was already tearing off a non-bloodied strip of his shirt to offer to Rose as a bandage.

Slightly mollified when he saw Rose was (relatively) unharmed, the Doctor turned back to Hartman. “Are you ready to listen to me _now_?!”

“Are they really ghosts?” said Hartman, trembling.

“No,” spat the Doctor, “Just not fully materialized. And I’m betting it’s not just those four either.” He stomped back into the TARDIS, Rose and Jack close behind him. The door slammed shut behind them.

The guards looked to Hartman questioningly as the blue box _vworped vworped_ away.

“Find out where he went,” she ordered, “I want to know what he’s doing and how he’s doing it.”

* * *

Jack peeked out the TARDIS doors and stepped into the Tyler living room. “All clear!” he called back into the console room. “Nice place, Rosie.”

Rose burst through the TARDIS door right behind Jack. “Mum! Mum!”

No answer.

“Mum!” Rose called frantically, dashing to check the other rooms. The Doctor stepped out after her.

“Jackie’s not here?” He frowned.

“Could the ghosts have gotten her?” asked Jack, wondering if they should go after Rose, whose cries throughout the flat were becoming increasingly hysterical.

“They’re not ghosts, they’re partially materialized creatures from parts unknown.”

“But ‘ghost’ is so much more catchy, don’t you think?”

Rose returned to the living room quite distraught. “She’s not here. Her purse is gone, but she’s not here. She must have gone shopping or something.”

“Rose,” said the Doctor softly, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But Torchwood probably knows where you live. She might—”

“She can’t be, her purse is gone,” Rose insisted. She whipped out her mobile. “I’ll call her!”

On the other line, Jackie’s phone rang and rang, but no one answered. Both the Doctor and Jack gave her pitying looks. She hung up and glared at them both. “She’s fine, she _must_ be. Both of you, just—just go watch telly or something!”

She hit speed dial and listened intently to her phone again. Jack obligingly switched the telly on and plopped onto the sofa, remote in hand. The Doctor’s eyes anxiously flickered between Rose and Jack, and he ended up squeezing Rose’s hand comfortingly while intently studying the news programme.

“These blue human-like creatures seem to be able to walk through walls—”

Jack switched the channel. A dotted map of the world appeared on the screen. “—seem to be all over the world, with especially high concentrations in heavily populated areas—”

Jack clicked the remote. “—president’s meeting with the prime minister has been canceled due to the ‘ghosts’—”

_Click_. “People are calling this the end of—”

“Mum!” said Rose suddenly into her mobile. “Are you there? Mum?”

Even over the telly, all three of them could clearly hear the piercing screech of Jackie Tyler. “ _Get your ruddy Doctor over here RIGHT NOW or so help me I will—!_ ”

“Mum, _calm down_ , we’re still on Earth. Where are you? Uh-huh. Hold on, don’t go anywhere, we’ll be there in a tick.” She hung up. “I was right, she went shopping. She’s at Harrods. Says there’s ghosts everywhere.”

“All over the world, apparently,” said the Doctor, nodding at the telly. “Right, then, we’ll go pick her up. Then I’m going to trap one of those…” He rolled his eyes at Jack. “Ghosts.”

“See?” said Jack smugly as they piled into the TARDIS, “Much better to say than partially materialized creatures.”

“You gonna go out like that?” asked Rose, pointing at the large blood stain still splattered on his chest. Jack dashed off to the wardrobe room to grab a fresh shirt, leaving Rose to watch the Doctor set the coordinates.

“Can you regenerate again?” asked Rose suddenly.

The Doctor froze, hand in mid-flick of a switch. “Why, don’t you like this one?”

“Well, yeah, but you said to Hartman….you said you had used them all up.”

“Oh! Nope, just bluffing!” he said cheerily, resuming his work on the console.

“Good,” said Rose, clearly relieved.

“I’ve got three more left!” Rose blanched. “What?” he continued, “That’s plenty, isn’t it? Nine down, three to go?...Maybe not?” Rose was completely silent. The Doctor stopped pushing buttons. “Oh. Oh, oh, _oh_. You thought I was immortal, didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah, if every time you die you get a new face…..”

“Nope! Mortal as you are…. _well_ , not as immortal as Jack. _Well_ , unless I manage to avoid any accidents for the rest of time….be a bit boring, though, wouldn’t it?”

Jack reappeared in a fresh shirt. “Ready!” he said, flashing a thumbs-up.

“Right, then, off we go! Allons-y!” exclaimed the Doctor, pressing one last button. "Oh, I definitely think I'll keep that. Allons-y, al _lons_ -y, allons- _y...._ "

The TARDIS landed with a shaking crash across from Harrods.

The street was a madhouse. Cars lay abandoned in the street, ignitions still running. A double-decker bus had smashed into a brick wall. People dashed madly around, screaming into mobiles or running out of stores. Ghosts marched through the entire melee with no particular direction in mind. And in the middle of it, still clutching some shopping bags in one hand and a mobile in the other, was Jackie Tyler.

Jackie hurried to the TARDIS as soon as it materialized and Rose stepped out. Mother and daughter were reunited with a crushing hug before Rose yanked her mother into the TARDIS.

The man inside the alien police box was not the same one Jackie had seen just a few hours ago. “Don’t tell me you changed your face again!” cried Jackie, dropping her shopping bags.

“Oh, no, I’m no Doctor,” said Jack, charming smile spreading across his face. He extended a hand. “Captain Jack Harkness. I’m a friend of the Doctor’s and your sister’s.”

“She’s my daughter,” said Jackie, utterly seduced. She took his hand enthusiastically.

“Really?” said Jack in an air of surprise, “I never would have guessed.”

“Jack, that’s my mum!” Rose looked as if she was going to be sick.

Jackie tore her gaze off Jack. “Course I am, sweetheart, but that doesn’t mean—”

The Doctor emerged from beneath the console grating carrying a metal device on his back. “Who you gonna call?”

“Ghostbusters!” both Rose and Jack chimed.

“I ain’t afraid of no ghosts!....Oh, hello, Jackie. Jack, trust me, you don’t want to go there. Really.”

“I was only being polite—”

“An-y-way! Rose, Jack, take one of these,” the Doctor tossed a traffic-cone-shaped gadget to each of them. “We need to surround one of the ghosts so I can track which universe they came from and determine if they’re harmless or not.”

“Harmless?” yelled Jackie, “Course they’re not harmless, they’re everywhere! There you were, nattering on about black SUVs, when there are real ghosts out there!”

“Are they really harmless?” asked Jack, hoisting up his cone and examining it.

“Well, as far as I can tell they’re not hurting anyone,” said the Doctor, fiddling with the device on his back, “They could even be people from a parallel Earth partially manifesting in this one, not even aware they’re here.”

“So these could just be parallel Londoners?” suggested Rose hopefully.

“Or ravenous murderers who haven’t started a killing spree because they haven’t fully materialized yet,” said the Doctor cheerfully, adjusting the device on his back. “Let’s find out, shall we?”

“Oh, no, you’re _not_ going out there again!” cried Jackie, hands on her hips.

Ignoring her, the Doctor unraveled a tangle of wires from his pack. “Right, Jackie, you stay here….Try not to touch anything. The rest of you, allons-y!”

“Rose!” Jackie protested, but her daughter had already followed Jack and the Doctor out the door.

“They’re getting clearer,” the Doctor muttered, absorbing the scene of panicked people. “See? They’re not quite as out of focus now.”

“Is that good?” asked Rose, biting her lip.

“Depends on if they’re harmless or not,” said the Doctor, connecting Rose’s and Jack’s devices with a wire. “Right, Rose, Jack, don’t get between the ghost and the device you’re holding. When we’ve got it surrounded, I’m going to trigger the triangular field, and I don’t want either of you caught inside.”

Jack and Rose both nodded to show they understood.

The Doctor pointed at the nearest ghost. “Right, let’s get it, then!”

Rose and Jack ran ahead of the ghost, looping around so the wire connecting them cut across the ghost’s path. The Doctor held up his own cone, forming the third corner of their triangle. He threw another wire to each of them. “Plug it into the green hole!” he yelled, and they each did. The Doctor pushed something on the device on his back, then put his cone on the ground. Lasers emitted from each of the cones to form a pyramid around the ghost, which thrashed in its new prison violently.

“Right, stay there, be back in a tick!” he yelled, dashing back to the TARDIS. Rose glanced nervously at the ghost banging on the invisible walls of the pyramid.

“What’s he doing?” she shouted to Jack. He usually understood whatever technological magic the Doctor was performing.

“No idea!” Jack shouted back, grinning madly, “But I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed this!”

The Doctor reemerged from the TARDIS, dashed over to them, and pointed his screwdriver at his cone. “Increasing the frequency!” he yelled. The pyramid glowed brighter, the sonic whine increasing to an almost unbearable pitch….

And the ghost vanished.

The Doctor pushed more buttons on the device on his back, and the cones powered down. Rose and Jack disconnected their cords.

Jack stared at the spot the ghost had been. “Left a pretty big footprint, whatever it was,” he muttered, as they scooped up the gadgetry and hurried back to the TARDIS.

“You’re mad, all of you! And especially him!” screeched Jackie, jerking a finger at the Doctor, who was already examining the computer screen, glasses on.

“Right, let’s see if we can narrow this down….” He smacked the screen once, then resumed typing. Rose gazed over his shoulder at the indecipherable symbols until the Doctor stopped his typing. “Oh, but that’s….” He turned to look at Rose. “They’re from Pete’s World. Makes sense, really—the walls between our universe and that one must be particularly weak, especially since we traveled there…”

“Pete’s World?” asked Jack, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s a parallel universe,” said Rose, remembering. “Where my dad’s alive. We went there by accident once. Left Mickey there….” Her eyes widened in horrified realization. “Doctor, the footprints, the marching….they’re—”

“Cybermen,” finished the Doctor grimly. “The ghosts are all over the world, and they’re all Cybermen.”


	8. Something Alien

Yvonne Hartman’s cool demeanor had vanished over the past half hour. She frantically barked orders at her employees, all of whom were struggling to shut down the program. Giving commands to the computers did nothing. Every device they aimed at either the levers or the ghosts had no effect. All they could really do was measure the breach. The readings were too scrambled for any of them to properly organize, but one thing was clear: the breach was opening wider, and seemed to coincide with the ghosts’ increasing density. Some of them seemed to be turning from blue to silver, and she swore she heard one of them speak.

Hartman was just getting ready to lose it when she heard a sound she had anxiously searched for her entire career. The TARDIS was materializing in the Lever Room.

The Doctor stepped out to find half the guns in the room uncertainly aimed at him. “Oh, put those down, will you?” he snapped impatiently, “I _really_ don’t like guns.”

“Do what he says,” ordered Hartman as Rose and Jack stepped out behind him. “Doctor, the breach is getting wider—It’s at 75% and increasing…”

“I know,” said the Doctor, pointing at the wall that housed the breach. “You have to get that breach closed. Now. Those ghosts aren’t friendly.”

“We can’t,” said Hartman despairingly, “The levers are jammed.”

“Yeah, maybe because one of your idiots was _firing_ all over the place!” said Jack angrily.

The Doctor knelt beside one of the levers and prodded it with his screwdriver. Sparks flew out and he yanked his fingers back to avoid being singed. “Think, think, think!” he ordered himself, running his hand through his hair in concentration. “Oh! I need….I need….”

“What?” asked Hartman desperately.

“To the warehouse!” announced the Doctor, and took off running, closely followed by the entourage of Rose, Jack, Hartman, and several guards.

In the emptied room, the door to the TARDIS cracked open, and Jackie Tyler’s head poked out.

“Are we on Mars?” she asked timidly.

* * *

The Doctor savagely attacked the first crate he came to in the warehouse, sorting through the junk and tossing most of it aside. The others followed suit, rummaging through the other crates aimlessly. Checking to make sure the Doctor wasn’t looking, Jack pocketed a small gear he plucked from one of the crates.

“What are you looking for?” Rose asked, tossing a scorched piece of metal aside.

The Doctor gazed around frantically. “It’s sort of…boxy and blue and…”

“Like this?” she asked, holding up a steel-looking contraption with blue buttons.

“No, that’s…” his eyes widened, and he beamed. “Oh, perfect! Brilliant, you are! Jack, do you know how to use that?”

“Yeah,” said Jack, lips quirking upward, “And I totally approve.” He caught the sonic screwdriver the Doctor tossed to him.

“Aim it at the plasma coil generator, speed things up a bit, and ah, fix it for frequency Theta 6, will you?” the Time Lord instructed, resuming his digging through the crates.

“What does that thing do?” demanded Hartman as Jack tossed the screwdriver back and dashed out of the room to set it up.

“Something alien,” said the Doctor vaguely as he caught the screwdriver.

“You can’t just activate alien devices in here without telling me what they do!”

The Doctor whirled to face her. “And you,” he glared darkly, advancing on her, “Can’t gas my friends without telling me what’s in it. Can't gas them at all, actually.”

Suddenly he spotted something in a far-off crate and brightened. “Oh yes!” He dashed over to the crate on the far side of the room.

“Oh, aren’t you a beauty,” he breathed as he held up the hefty tube. He turned to Hartman. “Remember I said this was a Traxifolerian sunghi?”

“Yes,” said Hartman, baffled.

“I lied—and now we’re going to use it! Of course, you’ve got it assembled all wrong….” Fingers moving quicker than the eye could follow, the Doctor disassembled the fake sunghi horn and reassembled it into something that vaguely resembled a blue box with wings. “There we are! And in perfect working order, too!”

“What’s that then?” asked Rose.

The Doctor eyed Hartman suspiciously before finally explaining, “Put simply, it’s a plasmic mest capacitor.” Seeing the blank stares of everyone in the room, he sighed. “Put simpler, it’s an energy manipulator. I’ve tweaked it so it should work specifically on energy originating in Pete’s World. It’ll close the hole, and the ghosts will be cut off from this universe and stranded in their own. All I need to do now is hook it up to one of those levers before the breach opens all the way and the ghosts fully materialize.”

“So, to the lever room, then?” asked Rose.

“To the lever room!” he announced, pointing to the door with the bulky energy manipulator.

* * *

Jackie Tyler was there to greet them as they reentered the Lever Room. “There you are! What's happening? Are we on Mars or what?"

"Not now, Jackie!" said the Doctor exasperatedly, pushing past her towards the levers. He set the energy manipulator down and trailed wires from each wing to a lever.

"We're still on Earth, Mum," said Rose hurriedly.

Behind her, Hartman raised an eyebrow. “Mum?” she mouthed, obviously amused.

Rose turned to the Doctor. "Do you need help?"

"Yes, when I say so, push that yellow button there." The Doctor, still absorbed in his wire-connecting, waved one hand distractedly in the direction of the left wing of the energy manipulator. Rose moved towards it, poised to push the enormous yellow button. She looked back to the band of guards staring at them uncertainly, and the communication devices in their ears.

"Might want to take those out," she suggested, pointing to her ear.

"Alright!" the Doctor moved over to the wing opposite Rose, poised to push his own yellow button. He glanced back at the now ear piece-free group. "You may want to hold onto something." Without waiting for a response, he yelled, "Now, Rose!" And they both slammed on their yellow buttons.

The world exploded in a rush of sound and color. The whole of Torchwood Tower reverberated like the inside of a ringing bell, knocking everyone and everything around. The Doctor grinned at Rose as they both clung to the energy manipulator for dear life.

"It's closing! It's closing! Ha!" he laughed triumphantly, barely audible over the roar of raw matter melting back together. “Sealing off all the Cybermen from fully materializing!”

Rose watched as the first ghost marched into the Lever Room, becoming more focused each second. It was silver now, no longer blue, and the gleam of the metal brought back memories of Mickey and her dad-but-not-dad and zeppelins....

"Doctor! Cybermen!" she hollered over the roar of the breach’s gaping maw closing.

His eyes widened as he looked between the solidifying Cyberman and the energy manipulator with aghast. “There’s not enough time!” he yelled as a second and third Cyberman flanked the first, “It’s not closing fast enough!”

“What do you mean, not enough time?!” shrieked Jackie, who was clinging to the doorway of the TARDIS,  “How can a Time Lord run out of time?!”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” the Doctor snapped back, “ _Never_ heard that one before!”

He urged the energy manipulator fervently with his sonic screwdriver, and the building shook even more. “Ha!” he yelled joyfully as he felt the breach begin to close faster. “It’s almost shut!”

“Offline,” came the female intercom voice as yet more Cybermen marched into the Lever Room.

The warped air seemed to crackle with a final boom.

In the sudden deafening silence, Rose whispered, “Did you seal it?”

“Yup. I sealed it.” His grin was almost as wide as his ninth incarnation’s. “Sealed shut, dead, kaput!”

“Lovely,” drawled an earpiece-free Hartman, “Except one problem….” She pointed to the Cybermen, who now numbered over ten.

“Oh…” groaned the Doctor. “A few of them must have managed to fully materialize before the breach closed. The rest of them will be gone because they didn’t fully manifest, but there must be a few left…all here in the tower because it’s the closest point to the breach. Can’t be more than a hundred, though….but they’re stranded on this side.”

“Wonderful,” Hartman rolled her eyes.

“You will be upgraded,” commanded the Cybermen Leader tonelessly.

“Right, we surrender!” called the Doctor, raising his hands in the air. Rose and Jackie followed suit.

“Shoot them!” cried Hartman.

The guards opened fire. Bullets ricocheted harmlessly off the Cybermen’s steel chests for only a few seconds before the Cybermen returned fire from their wrist blasters. In quick succession the guards fell, until only Hartman was left.

She raised her arms hurriedly. “I surrender! I surrender, don’t shoot!”

“And if you’d done that a minute ago, those men would still be alive!” snapped the Doctor furiously as the Cybermen poured from the doorway to surround him, Rose, Jackie, and Hartman.

“You will open the hole between worlds again,” ordered the Cybermen leader.

The Doctor stared down the Cybermen leader, eyes scorching. “Even if I could, would I let more of you into this world? Don’t think so.”

“Sensors detect a binary vascular system,” said one of the Cybermen behind the Doctor.

“This upgrade has been encountered before,” the Cyber-Leader stated. It paused a moment, considering. “Take this one for questioning.” The Doctor felt the metal hands grip his shoulders and shove him from the others. “Take the rest to be upgraded.” The others were seized immediately.

“No, you can’t do this! We surrendered!” cried Hartman, trying to twist out the Cyberman’s grasp.

“You can’t! You can’t! I don’t want to die!” shrieked Jackie.

“Doctor!” cried Rose, fighting vehemently.

The Doctor desperately tried to jerk away from the Cyberman holding him, but he was held too tightly. “I’ll get you! Don’t fight them, I’ll think of something! I promise, I’ll come get you, I’ll think of something, I’ll—!”

The doors slammed shut. His friends were gone. Rose was gone.

“Where have you taken them?” the Doctor demanded.

“That information is classified for Cybermen only,” said the Cyber-Leader, “They will be upgraded.”

“Yes, but how? You can’t have brought the machinery over the void!”

“We have disassembled fifteen Cybermen in the unfinished area of the building for parts. Our numbers may have dwindled, but more Cybermen will join us every minute.”

“But…Oh,” said the Doctor, voice catching in horror. “Oh, oh, oh. You took apart your own people and used them for parts? Blimey, that’s inhumane. No offense, of course….”

“Cybermen have no emotions. Cybermen are not offended.”

“Sure are thick, though. You’ve taken them to the part of the building they’re renovating. Thanks. Something to comfort me, you know, as you rip my hearts out or something equally gruesome.”

“Enough.” The Cybermen on either side of the Doctor tightened their grip on him as a circular, revolving blade emerged from where the Cyber-Leader’s hand should be. “You will remain still.” The revolving blade zoomed closer to the Doctor’s left heart.

Sometimes he hated being right.

He squirmed and thrashed, but the Cybermen were holding him too tightly, and the blade inched closer to his chest….

And then the Cyber-Leader’s head exploded.

“What?!” cried the Doctor as the other Cybermen released him and drew their weapons.

“Delete. Delete. Del—” The other Cybermen dropped as they too were blasted with blue volts.

“I turn my back for one second...." whined Jack, holding a ridiculously large gun.

"I'd ask how you got that...."

"Built it out of Cybermen. After they killed me. Twice."

"Right, well, I'll have to ask you about that later. We have to get to the construction area. This way!" He dashed out of the Lever Room, Jack at his side.

* * *

The Doctor burst through the plastic sheet that served as walls in the construction area, searching frantically for familiar faces. His eyes honed in on them instantly, still held by Cybermen and lined up in front of a haphazardly constructed machine: Jackie and Hartman and....

His hearts sank. He only dimly heard Jackie’s shrieks that Rose had just been shoved into the upgrading machine. He dodged a blast one of the Cybermen shot at him and ran full throttle straight into the depths of the monstrous machine. Behind him, he could hear Jack yelling and blasting the Cybermen, and then all he could hear were roaring blades and his own hearts pounding and _there was Rose_ —

He slammed into her just as a saw blade came screeching down, knocking them both onto the bloody floor. An alarm sounded, and suddenly they were both enveloped by sparks as something, probably Jack’s gun, blasted into the machine repeatedly.

Only when the alarm stopped and the whirring of the machine died did the Doctor finally let go of Rose.

“Rose, you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she breathed, “You came! I thought for a second….”

“Course I came, I said I would…Just cut it a bit too close…” He winced. “No pun intended.” Why did his head hurt so much?

Rose laughed shakily. “You’re covered in blood.”

“So are you,” he pointed out weakly. He suspected some of the blood on him was not from the floor. He wondered if he’d refractured his partially healed ribs. He closed his eyes, evaluating. Bruised, maybe, but not fractured or broken….And it was his _head_ anyway….

Something dragged him and Rose out of the upgrading machine by their ankles. He dimly heard Jackie’s screams at seeing her daughter covered in blood, and he opened his mouth to explain that Rose was fine, he’d saved her, just like he’d promised, but the words weren’t coming out. The universe, he was sure, was not meant to be this blurry.

Jack was over him now, and he still winced slightly at the sight of a Fact. “Doctor? Uh-oh. Somebody find me a doctor—his head’s split open. One of those blades must have….”

The Doctor’s tried to focus, but his vision darkened and Jack's voice slowly faded away.


	9. Foam Coat and Other Mumblings

Barely a minute after retrieving Rose from the depths of the upgrading machine, the Doctor lay motionless and pale on the floor, his hair completely drenched in the blood slowly pooling around his head.

“What’s wrong? What happened to him?” cried Rose, breaking from her mother’s tear-filled hug.

“One of the blades in that machine must have nicked him. He’s bleeding out,” Jack groaned, whipping his shirt off and pressing it to the gash on the Time Lord’s scalp. “Idiot! Let’s let the magic immortal guy dive into the chamber full of sharp, pointy things next time, huh?!”

The Doctor’s eyes fluttered. “Head…” he muttered weakly.

Jack’s anger diffused instantly. “Yeah, Doc, you split your head right open.”

The Doctor blinked. “Rose?”

“Yeah, I’m here, I’m right here!” Rose knelt next to him, grabbing his blood-soaked hand in hers.

“Rose, I need your….” He trailed off, eyes struggling to stay open.

“Stay with me, keep talking,” Rose commanded, her voice wavering slightly as she gripped his hands so tightly her knuckles paled.

“Need your….fuhmkud,” he mumbled, face draining of color and eyes slowly closing.

“He’s going into shock,” said Jack in alarm, removing the blood-soaked T-shirt from the Doctor’s wound.

“Doctor, we’re going to move you to the TARDIS, okay?” asked Rose, gently grabbing him under the arms. The Doctor’s head lolled as she picked him up, still dripping crimson on the floor.

“Here,” offered Jackie, swallowing her squeamishness and picking up his feet awkwardly.

Jack readied his gun and peeked out the door. “No Cybermen. This way.” He waved his gun in the appropriate direction. Rose and Jackie followed after him with their load.

“Hasn’t lost any weight since Christmas, has he?” said Jackie tiredly. “Can’t complain, I suppose….oh, Rose, that was going to be you—”

“He’ll be fine,” said Hartman dismissively, walking behind them. “I mean, he heals fast, doesn’t he?”

"Yeah, but—" Rose stopped in her tracks. "How would you know?" Her body trembled, shuddering in absolute fury. " _You_."

“Not now, Rose,” warned Jack bitterly. Rose wasn’t the only one who didn’t want Hartman following after them.

“What’d she do?” asked Jackie, huffing slightly from the Doctor’s weight.

Rose only scowled murderously at Hartman as they continued down the hallway.

“So what was that last thing he said?” asked Hartman briskly, unperturbed by Rose’s outburst.

“I dunno, he was sort of mumbling,” Rose answered angrily, “Said he needed something…couldn’t make it out.”

“Said he needed your foam coat,” said Jackie as they turned another corner. “But I don’t know what use _that_ is.”

Rose's nose wrinkled in confusion. “But I don’t have a foam coat….”

“Foam cut’s a third-millennium surgical procedure,” offered Jack, “But that’s for ingrown toenails. Unless Time Lords have toes in their heads….kinda kinky….”

“Thanks for that useless piece of information,” Hartman snapped.

“Just trying to help,” snarled Jack, waving his gun threateningly. “Any better ideas, Blondie?”

“Hey!” chorused both Tylers, and Jack shrugged in apology.

Hartman rubbed her temples exasperatedly as they neared the lift. “Sorry. Should I help carry him or something?”

“Don’t touch him,” Rose hissed, glaring at her. “If you even—”

“Delete. Delete.” A small formation of Cybermen marched up the opposite stairwell just as the lift doors opened.

“Get him in!” ordered Jack as he began blasting the Cybermen. Rose and Jackie hustled the Doctor’s limp body into the tight space, Hartman scurrying behind them. Jack blasted one last Cyberman before backing in after them, blocking the entrance to the lift as much as possible with his body.

His position was prophetic. Cybermen energy blasts zipped towards the lift as the doors slid shut. One of the blasts hit Jack square in the face just as the doors sealed. His body collapsed onto Hartman, a charred hole where his face had once been.

“He’s dead!” shrieked Jackie, nearly dropping the Doctor’s feet. “They killed him!”

“He’ll be fine, Mum, just give him a few seconds,” murmured Rose, lifting the Doctor’s eyelids with one hand to check for a response. Next to them, Hartman wrinkled her nose in disgust at the corpse leaning against her. She tried to push him off, but in the tight space there was nowhere for his body to go.

“He’s dead!” shrieked Jackie again, “And look at you! This can’t be my daughter, this—this girl who walks around on alien planets and doesn’t even care when people die—”

“Ugh. Five times,” gasped Jack, face restored to charming perfection, “Five times! I think that’s my record, dying five times in a day. Twice getting shot, three times by Cybermen….”

The Doctor’s feet thumped to the floor as Jackie gawked at the captain. “But you—but your _face_!”

“Irresistible, isn’t it?” Jack gave her a cheeky grin. Jackie's mouth opened and closed soundlessly. Hartman rolled her eyes, then moved to pick up the Doctor’s feet.

“Don’t. Touch. Him.” Rose spoke through gritted teeth, and Hartman backed away, flustered.

The lift doors opened. Jack stuck his head out to check for Cybermen, then motioned them forward. Jackie, slightly recovered, reclaimed the Doctor’s feet, and they all hurried down the hall.

“So, foam coat,” mused Jackie, “Could he have said something else? From boat?”

“Stone moat,” Rose muttered.

“Home squad,” said Hartman, catching on.

“Sowing oats?” Jack raised an eyebrow suggestively.

“Fun toad.”

“Stun rod.”

“Flown the coop?”

“This is pointless,” said Hartman, massaging her temples again as they entered the Lever Room. “It’s like a horrible game of telephone.”

“Phone code!” said Rose, eyes widening, “He said ‘phone code,’ because last time we saw Cybermen Mickey texted me the emotional inhibitor code. It might still be in my phone’s memory!”

“Check," said Jack, opening the TARDIS door. Hartman's eyes bulged as she caught a glimpse of the console room. She stepped slowly towards it, hypnotized by the console's eerie glow....

And found Jack's gun in her face.

"After all you did to him, you think we're going to let you in?" he snorted. Behind him, Rose and Jackie hauled the Doctor inside and laid him on the console floor.

"Well, what am I supposed to do, then? Stay out here and wait to be deleted?"

"Fine by me." Jack slammed the door shut behind him, leaving an enraged Hartman stranded outside the TARDIS.

Inside the console room, Rose was carefully inspecting the blood caked underneath the Doctor's hair.

"I'll do that, sweetheart," said Jackie, "You just look for that code on your phone." She gingerly lifted some of his hair to inspect the damage as Rose took out her phone and started scrolling through its memory. "Blimey, that’s barely even a nick! I’ve cut myself worse chopping vegetables! Loads of blood though."

"Hartman was right, he does heal fast," explained Jack, leaning his gun against the wall, " It was a lot bigger before. It's the blood loss I’m worried about. No idea how long that’ll take him to fix."

"You got any rags or water or something?"

"Yeah, I'll go get some," Jack volunteered, and hurried from the console room to find some, leaving Rose and Jackie alone with the motionless Doctor.

"So how'd he get his face back, then?" asked Jackie. "He an alien?"

"No, he's human," replied Rose, still searching for the text on her phone. "From the 51st century. He's immortal now."

Jackie gaped. "They all immortal in the 51st century?"

"No, just him. Wasn't always like that."

"Well, then how'd he get like that? There a pill or something? Cause I want one."

Rose sighed, looking up from her phone. "The Doctor said I did it."

"You?! How’d you manage that? Since when've you got the power to make people live forever?"

"Since Mickey opened up the TARDIS with that truck. I don't really remember what happened after that, but the Doctor said I absorbed some of the TARDIS' energy and destroyed a fleet of Daleks, brought Jack back to life permanently, and saved...." She gazed sadly as the still form on the console floor.

Jackie was speechless.

"I didn't save him, though," she added bitterly. "All that energy I absorbed was going to kill me. He died taking it out of me. That's why he looks like this now."

Jackie stared at the man before her. "Does he do that often?"

"What?" Rose murmured, continuing her search on her phone.

"Save your life."

A smile flitted across Rose’s face. "Yeah, he does."

"Found some!" Jack proclaimed, reentering the console room and wearing a fresh shirt. He plopped his load of bandages and sterilized wet cloths down, and Jackie immediately started wiping blood off the Doctor's head.

"I found the code!" Rose exclaimed, showing the other two the numbers on the screen.

"Great," said Jack, "But what do we do with it? What did you and the Doctor do last time?"

"I dunno, he just sort of....plugged it in to the nearest machine. It was a parallel world, all the technology was compatible with everything else."

"So we've got no way to transmit the code," Jack groaned.

"Guess not...."

"He moved!" interrupted Jackie. The other two rushed over, but the Doctor's only movement was the faint rise and fall of his chest.

"Well, he did...." Jackie trailed off.

The Doctor's eyes suddenly flashed open. His teeth shone as he beamed up at them. "Hello! What was I doing again?"

Rose tackled him in an ecstatic hug.

"Cybermen," prompted Jack, relieved.

"That's right!" the Doctor nudged Rose off him, taking her by the shoulders. "Rose, I need your phone - "

"Already got it." She grinned, handing over her phone.

"Brilliant!” exclaimed the Doctor, pocketing the phone. “Now we just need a transmitter that'll configure with the phone and the Cybermen."

“Do you have a trans-thingy?” asked Jackie.

“Not really, no!” answered the Doctor brightly.

"Does one even exist in this universe?" questioned Jack.

"Not really, no!"

"Do you know how to build one?" asked Rose.

“Not really, no!” The Doctor looked at the incredulous faces around him. "Well....I'll think of something, won't I?"

"Back to normal then," Jackie muttered.

The Doctor sprung from the floor, then inspected the blood splattered on his suit. "Blimey, look like I've been shot, don't I? Suppose I'll maybe change, take some iron to finish replenishing my blood supply....oh! I know! The tachyon wavelength oscillator! I'll get that too!"

And he took off.

"Right, suppose I'll change too," said Rose, fingering her own bloody clothes. "Back in a mo." She followed after the Doctor, leaving Jack and Jackie alone in the console room.

"So," drawled Jack, casually sliding closer to Jackie, "Wanna learn something about the future?"

* * *

The Doctor and Rose both reached the door to the console room at the same time.

Rose stared, not at the small beeping tube—tachyon wavelength oscillator—that the Doctor carried, but something far more unusual.

“You have another suit?” she asked incredulously.

“Do you like it?” He preened, turning to show off more of his blue suit.

Rose smiled, tongue sticking out. “Brown suit’s better.”

“Oi!”

“But I like it. Didn’t know you even wore anything besides that brown suit and Howard’s pajamas.”

The Doctor opened his mouth to reply as they both stepped into the console room, but the words never made it out. Both he and Rose stood, shell-shocked, at the sight of Jack Harkness in the middle of a _very_ deep snog with Jackie Tyler.

“Jack, _that’s my mum_!” Rose shrieked.

The deep snog broke. Jack had the decency to show a tiny glimmer of guilt.

But before he could say anything, Jackie spoke up. “Oh, like you haven’t been off having a snog with _him_!” She jabbed a finger at the Doctor. Rose cheeks blossomed to a brilliant shade of red, while the Doctor’s eyes flitted around the room, searching for a place to hide.

His eyes settled on the door. “ _Domestics_ outside, if you please!” he said, spitting the first word out like it was dirty and heading out of the TARDIS.

They stepped out to find Hartman waiting impatiently outside.

“Took you long enough,” she huffed, arms crossed in impatience.

“Really?” said Jack sarcastically, aiming his homemade gun at Hartman. “Hey, Doc, want me to shoot her and see how long it takes for _her_ to replenish her blood supply?”

“Put the gun down, Harkness,” said the Doctor tiredly.

Jack scowled at Hartman before slinging the gun’s strap around his shoulder. “Any Cybermen go by?”

“No,” Hartman shook her head, “And neither has anyone else.”

“No one?” asked Rose. “Not even employees? Seemed like loads of people were working here earlier. Where’d they all go?”

“Good question,” said the Doctor, frowning in concentration.

“Well, they’re just….” Hartman trailed off, shifting uncomfortably.

“You’re not wearing your earpiece,” realized the Doctor.

Hartman jabbed a finger at Rose. “ _She_ told me to take it out. The breach was giving off horrible interference, anyway.”

“Do all your employees wear those ear pieces?” asked the Doctor.

“Yes. But they’re just standard comm devices—”

“Let me see.” The Doctor held out his hand. Eyes narrowing suspiciously, Hartman extracted her ear piece from her pocket and handed it over.

The Doctor inspected it with the tachyon wavelength oscillator as Rose let out a small ‘oh,’ casting a piteous gaze at Hartman.

Without speaking, the Doctor turned on his heel and walked from the Lever Room, eyes never wavering from the oscillator. The others followed him as he traveled down a couple flights of stairs and down a hallway.

Suddenly, he stopped just before a corner and raised an arm to keep them from continuing. “Right around there,” he said softly, pocketing the oscillator.

“I thought Jack destroyed the upgrading machine,” whispered Rose.

“I did,” murmured Jack, confused. “Blasted it to bits.”

“What’re we all whispering for?” demanded Jackie. She was quickly shushed by the others.

“Doctor,” said Hartman quietly, voice hitching in the slightest bit of fear, “What’s behind the corner?”

The Doctor said nothing, but his sorrowful eyes bored right into her.

Hartman pushed her way past him and around the corner. The others followed close behind her.

A line of Torchwood personnel, all wearing flashing ear pieces, stood at attention, staring straight in front of them blankly.

“Matt?” Hartman approached the nearest person, a tall, dark-haired man. “Matt Crane!” The man did not budge. “Matt! This is your superior speaking!” She snapped her fingers in front of his face. The man remained utterly motionless, still staring blankly ahead.

“It’s the ear pieces, isn’t it?” she said fearfully, reaching a hand out to Matt Crane’s earpiece.

The Doctor took in a sharp breath. “I wouldn’t touch that if I were you.”

“Well, you’re not me, are you?” she snapped as she took hold of the earpiece and yanked.

Matt Crane’s body slumped and collapsed to the floor, leaving his brains still attached to the earpiece clutched in the flabbergasted Hartman’s fist.

“Told you,” the Doctor muttered under his breath.

Turning pale, Hartman flung the earpiece and attached brains away, staggering backwards from the line in disgust.

“Was that his brain?” asked Jackie, covering her mouth with her hands and quivering. The Doctor gave a quick nod.

Jackie leaned forward and vomited all over Hartman’s designer heels. The Torchwood leader did not even notice, still gaping at the squishy gray flesh lying on the floor.

Rose patted her mother comfortingly on the back as the older woman sobbed hysterically.

“What are they doing?” asked Jack, shaken by the brains splayed across the hallway.

“How many people work in this building?” asked the Doctor furiously, “How many?!”

“Six hundred fifty,” said Hartman, reeling in shock.

“Six hundred fifty people, waiting patiently to be converted into Cybermen. They must be rebuilding the converter machine, cannibalizing their own troops in order to convert hundreds more.”

“Cannibalizing?”

“They built the machine out of their own cybernetic bodies, harvested their people for parts.”

Jackie looked as if she might be sick again.

Rubbing her mother’s back some more, Rose asked hesitatingly, “Are they….dead?”

“I think that one is,” Jack weakly pointed to the brainless corpse.

“Yes, they are, in every way that matters,” said the Doctor sorrowfully. He turned on Hartman, eyes flaring with anger. “Six hundred fifty people dead, because you decided to experiment on all of reality.”

“They were under my watch,” Hartman whispered, horror-struck.

The Doctor moved closer to the line, carefully inspecting the ear piece of the next person in line with the oscillator. “These things are emitting a signal. If we can hijack it…” He turned the oscillator off, pulling his jaw down with his hand in frustration, “Can’t access it from here. I need the source of the signal. We can use that to transmit the emotional inhibitor cancellation code.”

“Where’s the source then?” said Jack, readying his gun. “How big is it? What’s it look like?”

“About seven feet tall,” the Doctor lifted his hand above his head to show the height, “Made of steel, really shiny.”

“It’s coming from the Cybermen?” said Rose.

“Cyber-Leader,” the Doctor corrected. “That’ll be where the signal’s coming from. The _new_ Cyber-Leader, anyway.”

“What happened to the old one?” asked Rose.

The Doctor shrugged. “Jack blew it up. Regular Ace, he is.”

“Alright, so how do we find the new Cyber-Leader?” asked Hartman, business-like gaze focused on the Time Lord.

“Simple,” said the Doctor, mouth pulled tight into a grim line, “We surrender and ask very nicely to be taken to their leader.”

What little remained in Jackie’s stomach once more sprayed all over Hartman’s heels.


	10. Oh Look, We've Been Captured...Again

“Are you honestly suggesting,” said Hartman, her voice increasing in pitch, “That we just waltz up and let ourselves be captured?”

“Er, no,” said the Doctor, tugging on his earlobe. “ _I’m_ going to waltz up—well, walk up, I don’t dance. Usually.” At the last word, he looked pointedly at Rose, and Jack sniggered. “Anyway, we really only need someone to be bait, so _I’m_ going to walk up and ask very nicely to be taken to their leader—”

“Not going to let you, Doctor,” said Jack, folding his arms. “Sorry.”

The Doctor sighed, annoyed at being interrupted. “And why are you so intent on ruining my brilliant plan?”

“Because last time you were alone with a Cyber-Leader, it tried to gut you.”

“That’s why I’m perfect bait,” the Doctor argued.

“Forget it. _I’ll_ do it, seeing as I don’t die.”

The Doctor shook his head. “They won’t be able to tell that you’re different until after they’ve converted you, and an immortal Cyberman doesn’t even bear thinking about. I’m not taking that risk. Besides, I need to set this beauty off.” He extracted a small metallic ball from his pocket and held it up for them to see. “Electromagnetic pulse. Tiny one, only works for a few seconds, but it should delay the Cybermen for a few moments while I hook the code into the transmitter.”

“Great, you do that, and I’ll be bait,” reasoned Jack.

“You’re not being—”

“I’ll do it,” Rose volunteered.

“No,” the Doctor said instantly.

Rose arched an eyebrow and crossed her arms. “Why not?”

“Because I….” the Doctor started, then stopped himself. His fists clenched stiffly at his sides as he looked at her, pain evident in his eyes.

“Since when have you been so worried?” Rose demanded, jaw set. “I’m not going to live in a bubble. I want to help.”

“Well, then I’m going too,” Jackie announced. “You’re not going in there alone. Two’s better than one, right?”

“And three’s even better,” said Hartman, making up her mind, “Count me in.” Rose glared at her suspiciously. “Oh, get over yourself, Tyler. I serve Queen and country, and right now that means getting rid of those Cybermen. And those bastards murdered my team.”

“Fine, then,” Rose snapped. She turned back to the Doctor, “So we’ll be bait, you follow us all up to wherever the Cyber-Leader is and do your thing, yeah? And Jack will follow behind us too and blow their heads off if they try to, I dunno, upgrade us or something. Alright?”

The Doctor swallowed. “Alright.”

“Alright,” Rose repeated, smiling.

“Alright,” he echoed, smiling back.

“Alright already,” said Jack impatiently, “So how about we find the nearest Cybermen?”

“Yes! There’s two of them…” The Doctor consulted the oscillator and his wandering finger pointed every which way before finally settling on a direction. “That way.”

* * *

The two Cybermen marched up and down the hallway on patrol, their heavy metal footsteps echoing in the hall. Soon everyone would be the same. Soon everyone would be Cybermen.

Rose Tyler stepped from around the corner, biting her lip nervously. The Cybermen’s guns swiveled to her chest, and she raised her hands in the air.

“We surrender!” she called, as Jackie and Hartman emerged behind her, hands raised.

“You wish to be upgraded?” asked one of the Cybermen, still aiming the gun.

“Not yet,” said Rose hurriedly, “Take us to your leader first.” Her lips twitched upward slightly at her words. The Doctor was right, it _was_ fun to say that.

“You must be upgraded first.”

“We have vital information for your leader,” said Hartman calmly, “That he must receive immediately.”

“Yeah, it’s really urgent,” Rose added.

“What they said,” Jackie squeaked in terror.

“Communicate this information and I will upload it to the Cyber-Leader.”

“Doesn’t work like that,” said Rose, gaining confidence, “It can’t be…uploaded. We’ve got to tell him in person.”

The Cybermen paused to consider. “You will tell our Cyber-Leader this information.” The women nodded and placed their hands on their head. Keeping their guns trained on the three of them, the Cybermen marched them down the hall.

Behind them emerged Jack and the Doctor, who was clutching the oscillator so tightly his knuckles were white. Jack adjusted the enormous homemade gun strapped around his shoulder as they quietly stalked the Cybermen.

“So far, so good,” Jack muttered as the Cybermen turned the corner ahead of them.

“All my plans are good,” the Doctor breathed, listening intently to the pounding footfalls of the Cybermen and the softer steps of their captives. “ _Well_ , most of them…”

A sudden loud crash came from the direction of the Cybermen, followed by gun blasts and screams.

The Doctor and Jack bolted down the corridor, practically tripping over each other in their haste. Hearts pounding, they rounded the corner in a panic.

The two Cybermen lay twitching helplessly on the floor, limbs writhing in a robotic seizure. Rose, Jackie, and Hartman all were still in surrender position, mouths gaping open in surprise at their rescuers.

The Doctor and Jack slid to a halt. They were greeted by yet more people with guns—two of them.

“Nice shot,” said Hartman, removing all shock from her face. “Ianto, isn’t it?”

“Yes. To be fair, Lisa hit one too.” The woman next to Ianto shrugged.

“You’re Torchwood employees?” asked the Doctor. “How’d you know to take out your comms? How many of you are there?”

“Never liked those comms,” said Lisa, slinging her gun over her shoulder, “Gave me a headache. As for the rest of us? Luck, I guess.”

“There’s about thirty or so of us holed up in the Weapons Development Lab,” added Ianto. “We volunteered to go searching for other survivors.”

“There’s more of you?” The corner of Hartman’s lips turned up in relief.

“Well, thank you,” the Doctor nodded sincerely, “Really, thank you. Usually I appreciate it when people rescue my friends….and people nearby them. On this occasion, however—”

The booming stomp of metal boots approached from around the corner.

“That’s a lot of them,” Ianto said grimly. “Backup comes quick once you shoot one of them. We’re not going to have time to run.”

“Delete. Delete. Delete.”

“Yes you do,” said Jack determinedly, waving his gun. “Run, I’ll hold them off.”

“Delete. Delete. Delete.”

“They’ll kill you!” said Ianto.

“Delete. Delete. Delete.”

“Maybe. But it’s not that bad of a way to go, really. I’ve had worse.”

The Cybermen were close enough to fire, and their blasters emerged from their wrists.

“Well, don’t just stand there!” said Lisa, “Everyone, this way!” She waved her gun in the appropriate direction and ran. Jack caught the Doctor’s eye and nodded. Reluctantly the Doctor turned and ran with the others.

Jack stood his ground, aimed, and fired, blasting the first Cyberman in the chest. The others put more space between them and the Cybermen as Jack hit two, three, four….He pulled the trigger once more, and nothing happened.

Three blasts punched into his chest and stomach at once, and he fell to his knees and collapsed, dead.

As his death cry echoed down the hall, the Doctor slid to a stop, hesitating.

A few more steps ahead, Rose skidded to a halt as she realized the Doctor wasn’t following.

“Doctor, you can’t—” she started.

The Doctor looked her in the eye. “Run,” he told her firmly before spinning on his heel and dashing towards the Cybermen. “Oi, tin men! Unknown upgrade, right here!”

“Doctor!” Rose cried, lunging after him, but Jackie snatched her wrist and yanked her back.

“Didn’t you listen? He said to run!” shrieked Jackie. “ _I’m not losing you_!”

Ianto opened a door and beckoned them inside.

“Hurry it up already so we can lock this room down!” Hartman frantically yelled over her shoulder as she entered the safe room.

Meanwhile, the Doctor raised his hands in the air as he neared the oncoming Cybermen. “I think your leader wants to see me! Unknown upgrade, isn’t that better than chasing after them?” The Cybermen halted, apparently unsure of what to make of him.

Delighted with their hesitation, the Doctor pressed on. “That’s right, eh?” He hit each side of his chest with a fist maniacally. “Two hearts, ba-da-ba-bom, ba-da-ba-bom!” He was now the sole occupant of the Cybermen’s attention. “That’s right, ignore them, unknown upgrade right here, and shouldn’t unknown upgrades be taken to your leader?”

“You can’t help him now!” said Jackie, pulling on her daughter’s wrist again. Rose cast one more panicked look at the Doctor, who was now completely surrounded by Cybermen, and let herself be dragged inside the door.

As soon as she and Jackie were through, Ianto slammed the door and attacked the keycode panel on the wall, sealing it shut. They all stood inside a dimly lit, long, narrow room that appeared to be used for storage.

“Shortcut to the Weapons Development Lab,” Ianto explained to a quizzical Jackie.

“Excellent work, Jones, Hallett,” beamed Hartman, slightly out of breath from the running.

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Ianto gravely.

“Your friend’s mad,” Lisa told Rose, “Has he really got two hearts?”

Rose didn’t answer. “I’m going back out there.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Rose,” said Jackie sternly. “You heard the Doctor, he wanted you to be safe.”

“Yeah, well who’s going to keep _him_ safe?” Rose demanded. “Besides, Jack’s still out there.”

“Was that your friend with the gun?” asked Lisa sympathetically. “I’m sorry, but he’s dead.”

Both Tylers ignored her. “But _I_ want you safe, too,” said Jackie, her voice cracking.

“Which is why we’re all heading to the Weapons Development Lab,” said Hartman impatiently. “Or we would be, if you would both shut it.”

The Tylers were oblivious. “And I want _him_ safe,” said Rose. She stood a bit straighter, her eyes burning with determination. “So I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to go back out there. I’m going to wait for Jack to wake up. We’re going to find the Doctor, help him transmit that code, and destroy every last Cyberman in this universe. Every. Last. One.” She took a deep breath. “And if I die, well, he would do—has done—the same thing for me.”

Jackie was speechless for several moments. “You love him,” she finally said.

Rose remained silent, eyes cast down to the floor.

“And I can’t stop you, can I?” Jackie’s voice dwindled to a whisper.

“No,” Rose said firmly, looking her mother straight in the eye. “You can’t.”

Jackie swallowed. “Well, then…” She turned to Ianto. “Get the door open then, can’t you see she needs to go out?”

* * *

Jack woke with a gasp to find Rose hovering over him, concern etched over her face.

He groaned and sat up, rubbing his chest where he’d been shot a few minutes before. “Hello, gorgeous. Come to see me up?”

Rose smiled a bit. “You know, I’m never going to take your flirting the same way again. You snogged my _mum_.”

Jack grinned, then looked around. “Where is everybody?”

“Holed up somewhere, dunno.”

Jack spotted his gun on the floor and reached for it. “And there’s no way the Doctor would leave you out here by yourself. Which means he’s done something stupid.”

“After you died, he chased after them, beating his chest and going on about being an unknown upgrade.”

“Beating his chest? Now that I’d like to see.”

“Shut it.” Rose helped him up. Jack inspected his gun.

“Dead. There goes that.” He dropped it to the floor and kicked it away. “And they didn’t even leave me the Cybermen bodies to build another one.”

“Probably took them to use for spare parts. Didn’t the Doctor say they were rebuilding the upgrading machine?”

“Yeah. Did you see which way they took him?”

Rose shook her head. “Last I saw, they were surrounding him…what if he’s…”

“Look, worst that can happen is he’ll regenerate. He’ll be fine.”

“That’s not the worst that can happen,” said Rose, her forehead creasing in worry, “Remember what he said, that an immortal Cyberman didn’t bear thinking about?”

“Yeah…” A renewed sense of unease burned in Jack’s gut.

“I think we’re better off dealing with an immortal Cyberman than a Time Lord one.”

Jack winced. “So we’ve got no weapons and no idea where he is.”

“Pretty much, yeah,” said Rose, biting her lip.

“Sounds like old times….Wait!” Jack dug a hand into his pocket and produced his old Time Agency wrist strap. “Times have changed! Bet he’s the only one in the building with two hearts.”

“Yeah, he sort of went on about that to the Cybermen. You gonna go all Spock on me?”

“What’s a Spock?”

“Never mind, old Earth reference.”

“Scanning for a bicardial circulatory system….Found him! Let’s go, then. What was that the Doctor liked to say? I’ll unsee?”

“Allons-y,” Rose corrected.

“Yeah, that.”

Listening intently for Cybermen, Jack and Rose cautiously moved down the hall.


	11. Jack's Toys

Inside the Weapons Development Lab, tension rippled through the room. The twenty-five or so Torchwood workers were scattered throughout the room, not looking at each other. A few, like Ianto and Lisa, were huddled together in hushed conversations. A grizzled guard sat at a desk, running his fingers along the barrel of his useless machine gun. A woman in a lab coat was openly weeping in the corner. Hartman sat with her back leaning against the far wall, eyes closed and rubbing the sides of her head. And Jackie was pacing back and forth. What had she been _thinking_ , letting her daughter go off to face a bunch of robots? What if Rose needed help? And here she was, sitting here, waiting for something to happen!

The silence was more than Jackie could bear. With some difficulty, she stood upon one of the desks and cleared her throat. A few heads glanced up at her.

“This is ridiculous,” she proclaimed. “I thought you people worked with aliens! And here we are, sitting here useless while those metal _things_ are about!”

“Well, what do you expect us to do?” snapped a man in a lab coat.

“I dunno!” yelled Jackie, throwing her arms up in the air. “Just _do_ something! My daughter’s out there, and she might very well need us! Aren’t we in a Weapons Development Lab or something?”

“Bullets don’t work on them,” said the guard at the desk dully. “We’ve only got the two guns that even work against them, haven’t we?”

“She’s right,” said Hartman, standing up. All heads in the room swiveled towards her. “I hate to say it, but the screechy old bat is right.” Jackie glared furiously but remained silent as Hartman continued. “We’re supposed to be defending the British empire from aliens, and we’re cowering in here while our alien prisoner runs around freely, trying to stop them.” She whirled to face the guard at the desk. “Yes, bullets don’t work on them. But not every weapon in here uses them. We don’t even know what half of these do. For all we know, they melt steel. So for Queen and country and the good of the British empire, _I order_ you all to pick a weapon.” Her face hardened. “We’re going after them.”

* * *

So it was back to his original plan, the Doctor thought as the Cybermen marched him up the stairs. Just him, on his way to the Cyber-Leader, at gunpoint. Although no guns would have been nice. Really, they couldn’t use any _nicer_ weapons, could they? What about ray guns that tickled you mercilessly? That could be nearly as fierce as energy blasters, and a lot more polite….

Anyway. Jack would wake up in a bit, and Rose was hopefully holed up somewhere safe with Jackie. Nothing to worry about there.

What _was_ worrying was what he had neglected to mention to the others. The electromagnetic pulse tucked away in his breast pocket was tiny—so tiny in fact that it would only take out the Cybermen within a ten foot radius, for about fifteen seconds.

He would have to get right next to the Cyber-Leader, activate the EMP, and plug Rose’s phone into the outgoing signal circuit, all within fifteen seconds. He might actually have less, if some Cybermen were far enough away to escape the EMP when it went off but close enough to attack him.

Under normal circumstances, hacking his way into the Cyber-Leader’s outgoing signal circuit would take twenty seconds.

He would have to work very, very fast.

The Cybermen finally stopped in front of a familiar wooden door, which slid open as they approached, allowing them entrance to the room where the bronze void ship had been housed until a few hours previously. Somehow, an obnoxiously large throne of sorts had been procured for the Leader to sit upon—a throne upon the void ship’s platform, which was ten feet off the ground and only accessible by a ladder.

Oh, bugger.

“What is this upgrade?” boomed the Cyber-Leader from its lofty throne.

“Ah, I see you’re more of an ask-questions-first type of person…thing,” said the Doctor nonchalantly. “Much wiser than your predecessor. He was more into dissect-first, ask questions later.”

“Sensors detect a binary vascular system. What gives you this difference?”

“Time Lord,” the Doctor declared ominously. The Cyber-Leader showed no recognition. Oh, right. Alternate universe—never heard of Time Lords. Used to be he’d have people trembling in fear just by mentioning he was a Time Lord. And they were quite right to be afraid, too.

He missed his people.

The Cyber-Leader interrupted his musings. “You produce higher level readings on brain activity and brain functions.”

“Suppose so, yeah,” The Doctor casually reached his hand into his breast pocket to grab the EMP.

“You will be upgraded to the new Cyber-Leader.”

The Doctor froze, EMP in his hand, but hand still in his pocket. “What? Nononono, bad idea.” He made a face that suggested he had eaten something nasty. “Bleh.”

“Your higher brain functions will give the Cybermen better leadership and lead us to victory. Is this not a _good_ idea?”

“My higher brain functions would disagree,” said the Doctor, taking his hand from his pocket. The EMP lay hidden, clutched in his fist. “Besides, look at you! You’re doing such a lovely job already! You’ve taken the tower, you’ve got all of Torchwood lined up patiently waiting for you rebuild your upgrading machine. You’ll go from what, eighty or so to seven hundred? Quite an achievement! Wouldn’t you rather stay Leader, keep your power, stay overlord over all?”

“The Cybermen would benefit greatly with you as our Leader.”

“Ah. No emotions means no greed. Hold on, I thought all Cybermen were the same? I’m not even human, I won’t be the same. I’m different! ‘Higher brain functions’ and all that.”

“You will be the same.”

“But you _aren’t_ all the same,” declared the Doctor, slowly advancing. “Just look at you! The Cyber-Leader before you, he saw me and decided to cut my hearts out. You saw me and decided to make me your leader. If Cybermen were _really_ all the same, wouldn’t you have both tried to do the same thing, come to the same conclusion?” He edged further and further away from the guards and closer to the ladder leading up to the Cyber-Leader’s platform.

“You’ve _failed_ ,” he continued, “Your great scheme to make all people identical is a total mess! You haven’t made yourselves the same, you’ve only hidden the differences! Maybe the outside ones are gone, looks and size and race and ginger hair and all that. But the differences that count, the _really_ important ones, the differences that matter, they’re all locked up here,” he tapped his temple, “In your brains. Creativity, personality. Repressed, but still there.”

“Cybermen are the same!” proclaimed the Cyber-Leader in a tone that almost approached anger.

The Doctor bounded up the ladder in three quick jumps. He stood on the platform, facing the Cyber-Leader, hands casually in his pockets.

“Cause see, underneath all that circuitry and steel, you still have just a glimmer of humanity left inside that trapped, _festering_ brain. Because you can’t extinguish the human spirit, that wonderful human _spark_ —not completely.”

“Cybermen do not have spirit! We are free of difference!”

The Doctor shrugged. “Yeah, well—”

He charged, leaping straight at the Cyber-Leader with sonic screwdriver in one hand and EMP in the other. He activated the EMP just as his shoulder came in contact with the Leader’s steel chest, knocking them both over. Sprawled on its back and paralyzed from the EMP, the Cyber-Leader was helpless as the Doctor straddled its chest and pried off its metal face mask with the sonic screwdriver, revealing a pulsing brain interconnected with a mass of wires. Sonic-ing furiously, the Doctor dropped the now-useless EMP and extracted Rose’s phone, shoving it close to the Leader’s skull and connecting it to the outgoing signal circuit.

He was four seconds into his work when the first blast flew over his head. Bending lower in hopes of not being hit, the Doctor continued, wiring Rose’s phone more and more into the Leader’s cybernetic nerve center. The other Cybermen were climbing the ladder, aiming for a better shot at him….There! The code was downloading….hurryhurryhurry— _yes_! Now he just needed to—

The blast hit him squarely between the shoulder blades, and both the screwdriver and Rose’s phone tumbled from his hand.

He hoped he was ginger this time.

* * *

“He’s moving….” Jack kept his focus on his wrist strap.

“That’s good, though, right? Means he’s fine?” Rose bit her lip. As far as they could tell, the Doctor had been taken inside the room where the void ship had been, but they couldn’t follow after him. Five Cybermen were patrolling the hallway nearest the entrance, and with Jack’s gun dead, they had no weapons. Unable to get any closer, they both were crouched behind the corner nearest the patrolled hallway.

Jack still hadn’t answered Rose.

“Moving means he’s fine, right? Jack, answer me already!” She repressed the urge to claw his wrist strap off and check it herself. They’d followed the Doctor this far, and watched him moving around the room. But then he had stopped and not moved for a few long minutes. Now he was moving towards the door.

“I don’t think he’s moving,” Jack said slowly, “I think they’re moving him.”

They faintly heard the swoosh of the sliding door open a hallway away, and the stomp of synchronized steel boots marching towards them.

“Hide,” ordered Jack, and they rushed in the opposite direction towards the T-shaped fork in the hallway. They crouched behind the corner of the right wing of the T just as the boots turned the corner where they’d been a few seconds before.

The boots neared closer and closer, and Jack nudged Rose behind him. If the Cybermen turned right when they reached the end of the hallway, they were done for.

The Cybermen turned left, not even noticing Jack and Rose behind them. The first was the Cyber-Leader, clearly marked by the black rods on the side of its head. The remaining two marched in synchronization behind him, each dragging the Doctor’s motionless form by his arms.

Rose stifled her gasp until the doors to the lift the group entered slid shut. “Where are they going?”

Jack checked his wrist strap and leaned back, softly banging his head against the wall repeatedly. “Up.”

“What’s up?”

“Upgrading chamber. Or where it was, anyway.” Jack hit the wall with the back of his head again in frustration. “They’re going to upgrade him, and we’ve got nothing to stop it.”

“Well, don’t give up! We don’t need your little toys, we’ve still got our brains, yeah? We know where they’re going, we can _do_ something!” She paused, thinking. “We’ll, I dunno, set the upgrading machine on fire or—”

“Rose, I wasn’t giving up,” said Jack irritably, “I was thinking!”

“Thinking what?”

“Well, now I’m thinking I like the fire-in-the-upgrading-machine idea.”

“But what _were_ you thinking?”

Jack grinned, eyes glinting mischievously. “I was thinking it’s time to play with my little toy.”

Before Rose could tell him off for thinking about _that_ at a time like this, Jack held up his wrist strap.

“Mind out of the gutter, Rose,” he said cheerfully. “Let me introduce you to my friend, the teleport.”

“You’ve got a teleport?” Her eyebrows flew upwards. “What, seriously?”

“Well, sort of,” Jack admitted. “It’s a vortex manipulator, supposed to be able to travel through time and space.”

“Like the TARDIS.”

“Like the TARDIS. But it broke when I got back to Earth from the Gamestation. It’s taken me a long time to get any of it working at all, because I was missing a part. A part that happened to be sitting in one of those crates in the warehouse.”

“So let’s use it!” Rose said eagerly.

“Not yet. I only just got it assembled last time we were in the TARDIS. Haven’t had the chance to test it. Let me try it, and if I live then you can hitch a ride, okay?”

Rose bit her lip and nodded.

“Okay then, here goes nothing!” Jack said cheerfully, smacking his palm down on the wrist strap. He vanished with a flash of blue light, and reappeared behind Rose.

He looked down, checking for missing limbs. “Yep, still all here! Let’s see how far this thing’ll go!”

Before Rose could say anything, he smacked his wrist strap again, and disappeared. Rose anxiously looked around for him, but he did not reappear. Her heart pumped faster in worry as a thousand possibilities danced through her head. Maybe he’d ended up far away in the middle of nowhere. Maybe he’d accidentally traveled in time instead of space. Maybe the teleport broke as soon as he arrived. Maybe his atoms hadn’t rearranged properly and he was scattered in the air around her. How far did the immortal thing work, anyway? Could he come back to life from being completely vaporized?

Jack reappeared right in front of her, scowling at his vortex manipulator. “Very short-range. Won’t go further than a floor up at a time. But I don’t think it’ll leave parts of you here, anyway.” He opened his arms and grinned mischievously. “Come on, let’s have a hug.”

Rolling her eyes and smiling, Rose wrapped her arms around Jack tightly.

“You ever teleported before?” Jack asked.

“Does transmat count?” she said nervously.

“Nope. First time’s the hardest,” said Jack, “And we’ve got to go up a couple floors, one at a time. Ready?”

Rose squeezed tighter, shutting her eyes. Jack smacked his wrist strap, and they both vanished in a flash of blue.

* * *

Ianto Jones tentatively stuck his head out of the Weapons Development Lab. “Coast is clear.”

He stepped from the lab and strode down the hall, gun strapped to his shoulder. The remaining members of Torchwood and Jackie followed behind him, each similarly armed.

“So how do we find them then?” a man in a lab coat asked, wielding his bulky weapon uncertainly in one hand and a laptop in the other.

“Rajesh, isn’t it?” said Hartman. She herself was fearlessly carrying a gun half her size. “I expect we’ll be going up. The Cybermen seemed to be more concentrated on the higher floors.”

Jackie clutched her small handgun with one hand while the other drew a mobile from her pocket. “I’ll just call Rose,” she said confidently, punching the speed dial.

“But there’s no signal in here, not in this entire building!” protested Rajesh.

Jackie glared at him, hand not holding the phone on her hip. “If my daughter can call me from the far reaches of the Fruit Loop Nebula or whatever it’s called, I can ruddy well call her from here!” She pressed the phone to her ear desperately. “Oh, I got her voice mail. What a time for her to have her phone off!”

“Here,” said Rajesh, opening his laptop, “I can try and track the signal.” Jackie handed over her mobile, and Rajesh fiddled with it for a moment before turning to his laptop, typing furiously one-handed. The Torchwood survivors huddled around them in a mass, eyes darting anxiously around for approaching Cybermen and fingers wavering near their triggers.

“Found it!” declared Rajesh.

“Excellent work, Rajesh!” Hartman smiled in satisfaction. “Where to?”

“Sphere room. But what are they doing in there? The sphere’s gone.”

“Well, we’ll just find out, won’t we?” Hartman flicked a strand of hair out of her face, and hoisted her gun at the ready. “After you.”


	12. It's Electric!

The first thing the Doctor was aware of was that his arms were making a desperate attempt to escape their sockets. Now what would they do that for? Was this revenge for letting his hand get chopped off at Christmas? That was rather unfair; getting used to a new body was difficult enough, but swordfighting right after getting off regeneration sickness? He’d been lucky to only get a hand chopped off!

Then he realized his sneakers were dragging—no, _he_ was being dragged down the hall. Spurts of memories flashed through his mind at rapid speed: Telling Rose to run, the EMP, the Cyber-Leader and Rose’s phone and _one more wire_ ….

They’d stunned him, he realized, not killed him. They still wanted to upgrade him to Cyber-Leader. He tried to flex his arms, but the Cybermen’s hold on them was far too strong. They were dragging him to his worse-than-death.

There was still one more thing he could try. The Doctor closed his eyes, swallowed his panic, and concentrated. Oh, he’d never been good at this….

* * *

Floor after floor zipped by before Jack finally stopped teleporting. Rose stepped away from him, hand pressed to her head as she shakily tried to regain some sense of equilibrium.

“This isn’t right,” Jack said, frowning at his wrist strap. “He’s still going up.”

“But isn’t this the floor where the upgrading machine was?” asked Rose, still wobbling.

“Exactly,” said Jack, gazing intently at the miniscule screen. “It looks like they’re heading _all_ the way up….must be the Lever Room.”

Rose steadied herself. “Why?”

“Not a clue, but it’s only a couple more floors.”

Rose, who was turning slightly green, rewrapped her arms around him. “Transmat is _so_ much better.”

“Just be glad it works,” snickered Jack, “And don’t get sick, I don’t want to have to get another T-shirt.” His hand froze in midair, poised to hit the teleportation button. “Wait a sec.” He inspected the wrist strap closer. “The Doctor’s gone.”

Rose snatched his arm so she could see too. “What do you mean he’s gone?”

Jack whacked the vortex manipulator and inspected it again. “There are no bicardial circulatory systems running in this building.”

Rose stared at him. “But—he can’t—”

Jack fiddled with his vortex manipulator. “Fixing in on monocardial circulatory systems on the floors above us….There’s one. It’s right by where he was a second ago.”

“So he’s alive?”

“Yeah…”

Rose tackled him in a panicked hug. “Then shift!”

* * *

In the hallway by the sphere room, five Cybermen patrolled relentlessly, waiting for their new Cyber-Leader to return.

One stopped in mid-march. It turned its head towards the noise it had just heard.

“Fire!”

Five separate blasts, in a variety of forms and colors, impacted the Cybermen guards. Two of the Cybermen seized and dropped to the ground, while the remaining three advanced.

“Delete. Delete. Delete.”

“Next team, fire!” called Hartman.

Three more blasts slammed into the advancing Cybermen’s chests, knocking one of them to the ground where it lay motionless. The remaining two pressed forward, blasters drawn.

“Delete. Delete. Delete.”

“Next team, fire!”

Two more individual blasts slammed into the Cybermen, and the steel figures crumpled to the ground in response.

Hartman surveyed the unmoving Cybermen bodies, lips curled upward in pleasure. “Excellent work. If your weapon had no effect, partner with someone whose weapon did.” She kicked the head of a fallen Cyberman with a stained heel. “Onwards, shall we?”

Jackie followed with the others into the sphere room, shivering as she took in the still metal forms and pondered the small as-yet-unfired handgun in her hand. Did she have the nerve to use it? And if she did, what use was it, tiny as it was?

Much to Torchwood’s relief, there were no Cybermen in the sphere room. There was, however, no sign of the Doctor, his immortal friend, or his friend with the phone.

Rajesh consulted his laptop again. “The signal’s definitely coming from here.” He strolled over to a seemingly untouched computer left on a desk.

Jackie gasped when she saw something horribly familiar on the floor. Rose’s phone. She picked it up with shaky hands. If Rose’s phone was here, where was she?

Another silvery object caught her eye and she held it up to examine it better. That thing the Doctor always carried—sonic something.

Oh wait! Jackie suddenly remembered. Rose had given the Doctor her phone! Which meant the Doctor had definitely been here. But where was Rose?

She showed Rajesh the phone. “He had her phone—the Doctor, I mean.”

“So he was here,” ascertained Hartman. “Lovely. Rajesh, can you tell us where he’s gone?”

“No,” said Rajesh, studying the computer screen intently, “But I can tell you that the highest concentration of Cybermen are on the top floor.”

“Well, then. To the top floor!”

* * *

As soon as they reached the top floor, Jack consulted his vortex manipulator before taking it off and handing it to Rose. “I think we’ve got a few moments before they show up.”

“What do I do with this?” Rose asked, wobbling slightly from teleporting.

“I’m going to distract them. Grab hold of the Doctor and push that button,” he pointed, “To teleport outta here and one floor down. And make sure the Cybermen have let go of him first, or you might have some nasty stowaways with you, and I’m not sure that teleport can handle more than two people anyway.”

Rose nodded, strapping the vortex manipulator to her own wrist. “How are you distracting them then?”

Giving her a crooked grin, Jack extracted a small brown box from his pocket and flicked the top half of it off, revealing it to be an old-fashioned cigarette lighter. “What was that you said about a fire?”

* * *

The Doctor’s eyes were still closed as he concentrated intently on his breathing and hearts. Slow deep breath, two slow shallow breaths, slow deep breath, two slow shallow breaths….He felt woozy and weak, and he knew he’d managed to stop one of his hearts, but the small part of his brain still aware of the world around him sensed he was getting closer to the Lever Room. So focused was he on stopping his hearts that he could barely remember why he was being taken there.

A loud crash shattered his concentration. His trance broken, he opened his eyes, then winced as the pain that had been blocked by the trance radiated through his chest. His head thudded against the floor as the Cybermen dropped him. Gasping desperately for air, he became vaguely aware of orange flames licking at the corners of his peripheral vision. Hallucinations, he thought. Maybe the emotional inhibitor didn’t work on him, and he was going insane. In fact, here was another hallucination….Rose was running towards him, snatching him up in her arms….a flash of blue….

He blinked, shaking his head slightly to clear it. Rose was still there, but the room behind her had changed.

“Rose? What?”

“We teleported. Are you alright?”

“My heart,” he whispered, “My heart stopped. Hit it, will you?”

Rose bit her lip in determination, and whacked the Doctor with all her might.

“WRONG SIDE!” moaned the Doctor.

Rose’s hands flew to her mouth in embarrassed horror, but she recovered enough to hit the other side of his chest with slightly less force.

The Doctor sighed contentedly as he felt his heart resume its constant thrumming. “Thank you,” he said, eyes closed in satisfaction. A moment later he sat up and glanced around. “Are you here alone? What happened to Jack?”

“Oh!” Rose gasped. “Be right back!” She hit the vortex manipulator and vanished in a flash of blue.

The Doctor stood and jumped in place delightedly to test his restarted heart. All systems go, allons-y, ready to run miles and miles and miles!

Rose and Jack materialized in front of him, Rose staggering and Jack covered in soot.

“You’re alive!” Jack greeted him cheerfully.

“Yeah, thanks,” the Doctor beamed, then frowned. “Is that a teleport?”

“Maybe….” Jack smiled winningly.

“What happened?” interrupted Rose, handing the vortex manipulator back to Jack, who pocketed it.

“Worked perfectly!” The Doctor gave a sunny smile. “Set off the EMP, got the code downloaded and everything!”

“So why haven’t they gone insane yet?” asked Jack.

The Doctor’s shoulders slumped. “One little wire. One more little _teeny_ tiny wire was all I needed to complete the circuit. The code’s there, in the Cyber-Leader’s brain, but it’s dormant until I get that wire put back into place.”

“What’s up in the Lever Room?” questioned Rose. “Besides the TARDIS? Because we thought they were going to upgrade you, but they passed right by the upgrading chamber.”

“They were,” the Doctor said darkly, “To Cyber-Leader. Needs a different machine. Wasn’t going to let that happen, so I tried to stop my hearts.” His demeanor instantly lightened. “But look at that! Didn’t even need to! Except,” he frowned at Rose, “I told you to run.”

“I did,” said Rose fiercely, “And then I ran back. I wasn’t going to just leave you there.” She hesitated for a moment. “I love you.”

The Doctor stared at her, for once utterly speechless, a wide range of emotions flickering over his face. Jack subtly stepped back from this little heart-to-hearts, examining his nails and grinning to himself.

The Doctor finally collected himself. He took a deep breath. “Rose Tyler—”

At the end of the hall, the lift door opened, revealing a large group of Cybermen. “Delete. Delete.”

“Run!” the Doctor finished, snatching her hand and taking off, Jack right behind them.

They turned the corner, splitting apart to jiggle door handles frantically. “This one!” shouted the Doctor, finding one that was unlocked and beckoning both of them inside. They entered some sort of break room, carpeted, with a coffee maker on a counter and comfy sofas clustered around a wide-screen TV. The Doctor slammed the door shut behind them, reached in his pocket, and groaned. “No sonic screwdriver.”

Jack pointed to the furniture. “Barricade the door!”

Hurriedly they shoved the sofas and the coffee table against the door. Rose reached for the large TV, but quickly yanked her fingers back when it shocked her. “Ouch!”

“Rose, you okay?” said Jack as he lifted the TV and shoved it into the pile accumulating at the door.

“Yeah, it just shocked me. Static electricity, that’s all.”

The Doctor turned away from the pile, eyes large as satsumas. “Static electricity?”

“Yeah,” Rose confirmed, eyes focused frantically on the barricaded door.

The Doctor’s lips slowly moved turned up into a grin. “Oh, it’s ready!”

“Is what ready?” asked Rose, confused.

“Oh, Rose, you are brilliant! Fantastically, wonderfully, _beautifully_ brilliant!” He pressed his lips to her forehead excitedly, then took her hand and dragged her to the middle of the carpeted floor. “Dance with me!”

His enthusiasm was contagious, and despite the pounding of Cybermen on the door, Rose found herself grinning too. “What are we dancing then, a waltz?”

“The moonwalk!” he declared, sliding his feet along the floor easily, as if moonwalking was second nature to Time Lords.

Jack laughed. “You can do the moonwalk, old man? Thought you couldn’t dance!”

The Doctor kept moonwalking, Rose following his steps and giggling. “Harkness, Harkness, Harkness. Of course I can moonwalk. Learned from Michael himself!”

Jack quirked one eyebrow upward, laughing. “Whatever you say, Doc.” He struck a Jackson-esque pose, one hand in the air and the other lingering near his crotch.

“What are you doing?” laughed Rose as Jack danced by himself.

“Show-off!” scoffed the Doctor.

Rose glanced at the door, which was coming off its hinges, “Not that this isn’t fun, but why are we moonwalking?”

“STATIC E-LEC-TRICI-TYYYYYYYY!” The Doctor gleefully shouted, rubbing the soles of his sneakers back and forth on the floor vigorously. “This building’s chock full of it now! Supercharged! And won’t that be nasty for our metal friends’ circuits! Let’s make some more, shall we?”

Grinning as they realized the implications of the Doctor’s words, Rose and Jack both joined him in rubbing their shoes on the carpet, generating as much static electricity as they could.

The Doctor and Rose resumed their hand-in-hand moonwalking. Rose laughed hysterically, both terrified by the Cybermen who were almost through the barricaded door and highly entertained by the Doctor’s hair. The room contained so much static electricity that the Doctor’s hair, which usually stuck up anyway, was now perfectly vertical. Jack’s was only marginally better, and Rose didn’t even want to think about what her hair looked like.

The Cybermen burst through the door, blasters aimed straight at them. The laughter ringing in the room died instantly as the Doctor, still not letting go of Rose’s hand, pushed her behind him. Jack dove in front of both of them, arms outstretched.

“Delete. Delete. Del—” The Cybermen took one step onto the carpet, and seized as they were electrocuted.

“Ha!” yelled the Doctor triumphantly, “Let’s see you get in here now!”

The remaining Cybermen backed away, leaving the door dangling on one hinge.

“But how do we get out?” asked Rose, pointing at the retreating Cybermen, who were now standing guard at the door.

The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck, crestfallen. “Ah….didn’t really think that far.”

Both his companions folded their arms and looked at him expectantly.

“Well, alright, I’ll just come up with another plan.”

Jack strode over to the TV in the ruined pile of furniture. He ran his finger along the crack splitting the screen, a thoughtful look on his face.

Rose took the Doctor’s hand. “Doctor….”

“Maybe we could create a tribofonic wavelength? _Yes!_ No....flash bomb?”

“Doctor,” Rose started again. “What were you about to say? You know, before the moonwalking for our lives?”

The Doctor snapped from his technical reverie. “What?”

“You were going to say something, before.” She bit her lip nervously. “To me.”

The Doctor’s eyes widened. “Oh! Oh, that….” He squeezed her hand. “I was going to say, Rose Tyler….”

“Yes?” prodded Rose hopefully.

The Doctor took a deep breath. “Rose Tyler, I love you.”

Rose wondered if it was possible to explode from sheer happiness. Her face, surely, could not hold a smile this enormous. “Really?”

The Doctor struck a mock-affronted pose. “Course I do, you think I’d lie about that? I love you as much as….as much as the day is long!”

“As much as the day is long?” Rose repeated, quirking an eyebrow. “Nine hundred years old and you can’t come up with anything more original than that?”

“A Felspoonish day of course,” the Doctor clarified, “Not a Freytusian day. _That_ wouldn’t be impressive at all.”

“Right, well, good enough for me,” Rose decided, beaming.

“Sorry to interrupt, as cute as this is….” said Jack, “But I’ve got a way out of here.” Behind him, both the TV and coffee maker from the counter were scattered on the floor in pieces.

“Flash bomb?” asked the Doctor knowingly.

“Yeah,” said Jack proudly, holding up a small mechanical shape. “Wait,” His eyes narrowed in suspicion, “How did you—?”

“Figured it out a couple minutes ago.”

“Then why didn’t _you_ build it?” whined Jack.

“I was, er….” The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck. “Busy.”

“Yeah, well, next time it’s my turn to be busy.”

“You wish,” giggled Rose. The Doctor grinned back at her.

“Here goes nothing, then,” said Jack, positioning himself in front of the door.

Rose grabbed the door handle, ready to open it at the signal. Jack’s arm curled back, poised to throw the bomb like a softball.

“Now!”

All three of them shut their eyes.


	13. Better than a Bomb

The Cybermen stood at attention, utterly motionless, blasters pointed at the door. Eventually, the humans would come out. Their weak emotions—loneliness, boredom, fear—would _force_ them to come out. They would have no such problems when they became Cybermen.

The door to the break room opened, and the Cybermen prepared to fire as a small object came flying out.

The blinding flash prevented them from seeing three figures dart from the door and make a mad dash for the stairs. They were already halfway up by the time the Cybermen recovered enough to follow them.

The Doctor shouldered the stairwell door to the top floor open, then froze in his tracks. Rose and Jack collided into his back.

Three feet away, a Cyberman’s blaster was primed and aimed directly at the Doctor’s head. A split second later, Rose and Jack both yelled when they realized what was happening, but the Doctor knew it was too late.

He closed his eyes and heard the blast.

But nothing hit him. He opened his eyes.

The Cyberman sizzled on the floor at his feet. Standing over it, holding a warm Bastic blaster and looking terrified out of her mind, was Jackie Tyler.

“I fired it! I can’t believe I fired it!” exclaimed Jackie, almost dropping the gun. “Are you okay?”

“Fine, yes, thank you,” said the Doctor, recovering from the shock and eying her weapon suspiciously. “Where did you get a Bastic blaster? That thing’s powerful enough to rip through a Dalek casing!”

Jackie pointed behind her, and the Doctor, Rose, and Jack all took in the scene before them. Hartman was swinging a large Sontaran blaster and whacking it at a Cyberman’s head. Around her, Torchwood survivors were firing a wide assortment of weapons or, like Hartman, swinging them like clubs. The Cybermen were fighting back, blasters having already claimed five of the Torchwood group. More would soon follow if something wasn't done soon.

More Cybermen were also marching up the stairs, their cries of “Delete” approaching closer and closer. The Doctor, Rose, and Jack hurriedly ran with Jackie into the melee as the Cybermen from downstairs entered the battle.

With this group of newcomers, the human (and Time Lord) force was now completely surrounded and outnumbered three to one.

“Hartman!” called the Doctor, leading his group tentatively over to Hartman, who had managed to distract one Cybermen enough for one of her employees taking cover behind the TARDIS to shoot it. “Hartman, you’ve got to surrender!”

“ _We’re not surrendering_!” shrieked Hartman, jamming the barrel of her blaster into the Doctor’s chest, a frenzied look in her eyes.

The Doctor raised his hands in the air, tentatively glancing down at the gun prodding his sternum. “Look, we haven’t got time for this—”

Rose stepped around the Doctor, pulled her fist back, and punched Hartman in the eye. Reeling from the impact, Hartman’s grip was loose enough for Rose to yank the Sontaran blaster away.

Hartman, the Doctor, Jack, and Jackie all stared at her, shocked. Hartman held a hand pressed to her bruising eye.

“Will you listen to him JUST ONCE?!” yelled Rose.

Hartman remained utterly speechless, mouth open in a perfect ‘o.’

“Right, we surrender!” announced the flustered Doctor, still staring at Rose. “Torchwood surrenders!”

“Er, yes,” mumbled Hartman. Her voice soon increased in volume. “Torchwood! Weapons down! We surrender!”

Glancing at each other in confusion, the remaining Torchwood survivors lowered their weapons and lifted their hands, and the Cybermen ceased fire.

The Cyber-Leader surveyed the group. “You will come peacefully?”

Hartman and several Torchwood survivors opened their mouths to protest.

“Course we will!” announced the Doctor, stepping forward.

“And you will become our new Cyber-Leader?”

“Course I will! Mind you,” the Doctor started to wander around the room, weaving between the motionless Cybermen and Torchwood survivors. “Don’t know why I didn’t see it before! After all, who doesn’t want to live longer?”

“Then help us to fix the upgrading machine. This whole planet will join us within a week with your help.”

The Doctor continued meandering through the room, nearing the Cyber-Leader, and resumed speaking as if he hadn’t heard it speaking. “Thing is, though, I’ve already lived a long, long, time. And you know what? It’s not worth it without emotions.”

“Even loss? Or grief? Or pain?” challenged the Cyber-Leader. “Have you ever felt those?”

The Doctor smiled sadly. “Oh, yes.”

“Then do you not wish to eliminate those feelings?”

The Doctor shook his head. “Nope. I’d be better off dead. Someone rather brilliant once told me that pain and loss define us as much as happiness and love. And she was right. Besides, I don’t suppose you have happiness or love either?”

“Of course we do not,” said the Cyber-Leader in a tone approaching haughtiness. “Cybermen are free of emotions.”

“But that’s where you’re wrong. You see, it’s like I said before—you can’t erase that brilliant little human spark. It goes on, on throughout time and all over the universe, its own little empire of creativity, curiosity, innovation, persistence, bravery, kindness….It’s one of the reasons I love humans.” He glanced over at Rose. “Some more than others.” He pondered for a moment. “That and their tea. You lot make excellent tea.”

“We are not human. We are Cybermen.”

“Oh, that’s right, you’ve certainly managed to _suppress_ your humanity.” The Doctor glided closer and closer to the Cyber-Leader. “Because the humans I know? They live such short lives. But they make the most of it! Marking out time with birthdays and holidays and calendars, creating art and literature and music and _brilliant_ films, trying to make sense of the universe around them…even if they’re horrible at it….” In the corner of his eye, the Doctor could see Hartman huffing angrily.

“But what _leads_ to all that? What _fuels_ it?” the Doctor continued, close enough to touch the Cyber-Leader’s steel frame. He casually circled around it, still rambling. “Emotions! Some of the best art has sprung from sorrow, some of the most brilliant humans suffered grief or pain. And you used to be able to appreciate that. You used to be able to feel.” He paused. “And I think you still do. Frustration that I won’t join you, for example.”

“But we feel nothing!” protested the Cyber-Leader. “The emotions are gone!”

“ _Well_ , not really,” continued the Doctor, stopping his circling to stand directly in front of the Cyber-Leader. “Thing is, emotions are part of that innate humanity you’ve suppressed in your attempt at achieving perfection. You might not be feeling anything here,” the Doctor lightly placed a hand on his chest. “But you are…in there.” He firmly prodded at the Cyber-Leader’s skull in just the right place.

The results were instantaneous. The Cyber-Leader howled as it clutched its head and dropped to its knees. All around the Lever Room, Cybermen seized and screamed in agony as the emotional inhibitor cancellation code shredded the mental block keeping them sane.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” the Doctor said softly as he contemplated their writhing forms. Somewhere below, he knew, upwards of 600 people were wailing in similar emotional torment, if their brains were still intact enough to think.

A soft hand took his. “Run?” suggested Rose. Half of Torchwood had already escaped the top floor, abandoning their semi-useless weaponry.

The Doctor gave her a small smile. “Run.”

* * *

When the screaming finally died, the small group of Torchwood survivors and friends of the Doctor huddled in a mass on the next-to-last floor, just below the Lever Room.

“Oh, Rose!” Jackie cried, flinging her arms around her daughter. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

“Me too,” Rose replied with a grin, returning her hug. “And look at you! Can’t believe you saved the Doctor. I’d never let him live that down if I were you.”

Jackie pulled back, sniffing. “Oh, I must be a state! Anyway, I found this.” She handed Rose her phone back.

“Thanks, Mum!” Rose said, pocketing it, “Thought I’d never get it back if the Doctor lost it.”

“And you!” Jackie snatched the Doctor by the wrist and yanked him closer. “Found this.” She pressed the sonic screwdriver into his palm.

“My sonic screwdriver!” exclaimed the Doctor with delight, “I _love_ my sonic screwdriver!”

Jack and Rose’s eyes met in mutual silent laughter at the Doctor’s joy at being reunited with his favorite tool.

Jack suddenly felt a tug as Jackie squashed him in a tight hug. “And you! Thank you for keeping her safe!”

Jack wriggled slightly in response. No smile was charming enough to escape a Tyler hug.

Meanwhile, the Torchwood survivors were comforting each other and chattering amongst themselves. Ianto and Lisa were checking each other over for injuries, relieved to see that there weren’t any. Rajesh was in deep conversation with Hartman about what to do with the Cybermen bodies.

“Their technology was simply amazing!” gushed Rajesh. “Their ability to control the mind, not to mention their near impenetrable armor….”

“Oh, yes,” remarked Hartman thoughtfully, “Plenty to keep studying! We’ll come back, analyze their bodies, discover how that machinery works….it could end up being very useful.”

The Doctor whirled around to face Hartman. “You’re not going to get a chance to examine the bodies.”

Hartman rolled her eyes. “Oh don’t start that again—”

“But you see, I _like_ to finish what I start,” the Doctor said, his voice low and dangerous.

“She’s a bit full of herself, isn’t she?” Jackie murmured to Rose.

“I heard that!” snapped Hartman.

“Now Jackie, let’s be nice,” scolded the Doctor. Jackie folded her arms and glared at him in a huff. “Settled are we?” Jackie refused to answer.

“Right, then…and now for you lot.” The Doctor whipped out his sonic screwdriver and played with the settings. “This is goodbye.” He found the right setting, aimed the screwdriver at the floor, and pressed the button. The blue light flashed on and off, and the Doctor inspected it carefully. “There we go.” In a louder voice, he announced, “You have ten minutes to leave the building.”

“Excuse me?” said Hartman, eyebrows raised in disbelief, “I’m prepared to offer you amnesty because of your help—”

“Let me rephrase that,” the Doctor interrupted, turning to face the small crowd of Torchwood survivors. “This building,” he waved his arms widely, “Is not going to be here in nine minutes and fifty-five—ooh, fifty-four seconds. If you don’t want to leave with it, get out of here right now. If you take anything with you, I’ll know. And do you know how I’ll know that? Because you won’t make it out. There’s just enough time to clear the building if you start running right now.” His eyes glinted madly as he roared, “RUN!”

The terrified ex-Torchwood employees scattered in a rushed exodus, leaving Hartman to stand defiantly.

“What, you want to know where the building’s going?” The Doctor looked bemused.

“I want to know how.”

“Fine. It’s something alien.”

Hartman’s eyes widened as she directed her gaze at Jack, who waved smugly. “That thing from the warehouse….you planted a bomb.”

“Oh, even better than a bomb!” The Doctor’s delighted grin grew even wider. “Generates _loads_ of static electricity and is going to transport this entire building! Tell you what, how about a little deal? I’ll tell you where the building is going—and where you’re going if you don’t start running—if you tell me where you put the things you took from my pockets when I got here.”

Hartman hesitated for a moment. “Top left drawer of my desk, under a false bottom.”

“Thank you,” said the Doctor sincerely. “Torchwood Tower is headed towards the Shadow Proclamation—sort of an intergalactic police force. It’s going to arrive with a _very_ detailed report about one Yvonne Hartman, Earth inhabitant, with crimes including imprisonment of a foreign-sentient creature, attempted universe destruction, and further endangerment of an endangered species. So,” his voice darkened, in full Oncoming Storm mode, “Go. Go back to your pitiful existence. Keep your head down and hope they don’t notice you. Because if they do, if they hear even a _whisper_ of you, Yvonne Hartman, you will be unspeakably sorry and beg for mercy that will never be granted.” He slowly advanced on Hartman as he continued. “And if you start this organization up again, if you even _think_ about developing more alien weapons, and most especially, if you contact anyone I’ve known or ever will know, _I will find you_ , and you will be even sorrier, because _nothing_ will be able to save you. I’ll make sure of that.”

Hartman stood, no longer defiant, but absolutely petrified at the Doctor’s fierce gaze.

“You have eight minutes and twenty-three seconds. NOW RUN!”

Hartman turned and ran, tripping on her vomit-stained high heels in her haste.

The Doctor turned back to Rose, Jack, and Jackie. “Shall we go up then?”

Wordlessly, they followed him upstairs, stepping tentatively over the Cybermen bodies.

“You can get in the TARDIS if you like,” the Doctor said lightly, “I just need to pick up a few things.” He strode over through the cracked glass to Hartman’s office and rummaged through the top left drawer, excitedly sticking his found belongings into his bottomless pockets.

“Is he always that scary?” Jackie whispered to Rose, alarmed by the Doctor’s sudden shift from threatening to cheerful.

“Sometimes, yeah,” whispered Rose back, “But he’s old, Mum. The things he’s seen….so much war and evil.” But that was the Doctor for you.

“Hey, Doctor!” called Jack as the Doctor delightedly located his rubber duck, “I didn’t realize those coordinates were for the Shadow Proclamation.”

“Oh, they’re not!” the Doctor called back, jamming the duck into his pocket. “You think I want that lot knowing I exist? Nah, I just wanted Hartman properly terrified. I’ll be keeping an eye on her.”

“Well, where’re you sending it then?” asked Jackie.

“Pluto!” the Doctor beamed proudly, closing the desk drawer and walking back over to them, his TARDIS key in hand. “You lot don’t colonize it for _millennia_ after it loses planet status.”

“What do you mean, ‘loses planet status?’” asked Rose as they piled into the console room.

“Oh, Rose, I forgot, you haven’t caught up in your current events, have you?” exclaimed the Doctor, his mouth stretching to a smug grin. “Pluto lost planet status in 2006.”

“Seriously? What’s my very educated mother suppose to serve nine of, then?”

The Doctor’s smugness vanished as he stared at Rose. “What? How educated is your mother?”

“Oi!” said Jackie, glaring.

“It’s an Earth mnemonic,” explained Jack, “And it’s actually My Very Educated Mate Just Served Us Nine Commendable Pizzas with Everything But Pepperoni Fragments.”

Rose stared blankly at Jack.

“The universe got bigger?” he shrugged.

“Mate?” Rose said finally, raising an eyebrow.

“‘Mother’ isn’t politically correct.”

“Oh!” said the Doctor in realization, “I get it! Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Ceres, Pluto, Eris, Bob, Proserpina, and Fortuna! I took you there for chips, Rose, right after Rome, do you remember?”

“You didn’t mention it was in my solar system!” replied Rose indignantly, “And I thought you said Pluto wasn’t a planet?”

Jack shrugged. “There was a revival protest movement after they discovered Bob.”

“Bob?” Jackie finally asked, utterly unable to comprehend the entire conversation.

“Long, tragic story,” said the Doctor, waving a hand dismissively. “I should know, I was there.” He dashed to the console. “Shall we see Torchwood Tower off then?”

A few buttons and one dematerialization later, the four stepped from the TARDIS across from Torchwood Tower and the ominous dark clouds hovering above it. The mob of frantic ex-employees poured from the doors out into the street.

“It’s raining up,” said Rose in awe as the Doctor put an arm around her shoulders.

“Yup,” the Doctor popped the _p_ , “H2O scoop. Brilliant to watch, isn’t it?”

With a booming crackle, the Torchwood Tower vanished, leaving a gaping crater in the street.

“It’ll have decomposed by the time they find it,” said the Doctor gleefully, returning to the console controls. He clapped his hands together. “Where to, then?”

“Not Mars,” declared Jackie, “I’m going to my flat, and I’m staying there! No more mad robots, no more ruddy aliens—”

“Got it. Powell Estate it is,” said the Doctor dejectedly.

“Well, except for you, of course,” Jackie added in exasperation.

The Doctor brightened considerably as he set the coordinates. A soft bump later, he bounced to the doors and flung them open. “There we are!”

Jackie turned to her daughter expectantly. “Are you staying with them then?”

“Yeah,” said Rose, biting her lip and waiting for a lecture.

“Alright,” Jackie sighed. “Just come home and visit. And _call_.” Rose nodded.

“You,” she jabbed a finger at the Doctor. “Don’t let anything happen to my daughter.”

“I won’t,” he said solemnly.

“And _you_ ,” Jackie spun around to face Jack. “One more?” she said hopefully.

Jack grinned, snatched her around the waist, dipped her, and gave her a _very_ deep snog.

Rose wrinkled her nose and averted her eyes. This was going to take a lot of time to forget. She cracked her eyes open, then shut them immediately. A _lot_ of time.

After ten seconds, the Doctor cleared his throat. “Alright.” Jack carried on, oblivious. “Alright!”

Jack swung Jackie back upright, released her, and saluted, still grinning.

A very flustered Jackie stepped from the TARDIS to her living room.

The Doctor sniffed as he shut the door. “Jack, really?”

“Hey, that’s my mum you’re talking about!” said Rose indignantly, caught between agreeing with the Doctor and feeling a bit insulted.

Jack shrugged as they dematerialized.

The Doctor turned to Rose. “You’re really sure you don’t want to stay with her? I mean, she’s your _mother_ —”

Rose stared at him in disbelief. “Doctor, you’re so _thick_.”

“Am not—”

Rose snatched his lapels and yanked him into a deep kiss.

Jack whistled. “And you thought my kiss was long?”

The snogging continued.

“Come on, that’s not fair!”

Both ignored him.

“Seriously, guys, can I get in on this?”

Rose finally came up, gasping for air.

“No,” answered the Doctor, now that his mouth was no longer occupied. He released his hold on Rose and turned to the console, rubbing his hands together. “Where to, then?”

“Fortuna,” Rose licked her lips, “I want chips.”

“Then chips you shall have!” The Doctor started his usual mad dash around the console controls.

“So what happened in Rome, then?” asked Jack conversationally.

Rose smiled, remembering. “It started with this statue….”

And before long strains of laughter reverberated throughout all of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still read the reviews on my old stuff. I'd love to get some new ones. :)


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